In the Hearts of Men
by JMK758
Summary: Several teams band together when an Agent is attacked and the Teams must hunt for someone they've sworn to protect.
1. Fishing

This is my 33rd NCIS Mystery, the Third story of my Fourth Season. 'NCIS' is owned by Belisarius Productions while Dr. Maura Isles hails from 'Rizzoli and Isles', which is owned and produced by Hurdler Productions and by Ostar Productions. As a not too great coincidence, she is portrayed by Sasha Alexander, the former Kate Todd.  
>The usual legal Disclaimers apply. I only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents.<br>You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
>This story takes place in the second week of July, four days after the conclusion of 'Who Knows What Evil Lurks?' Mary Waghoff still evades the hunt as depicted there. The team's concern is that she is going to set off the stooges alluded to in 'Ventriloquist Affair' all at once.<br>Ducky is on a well deserved vacation in Edenborough with Dr. Jordan Hampton; Abby returns from her sojourn to Jefferson Parish, Louisiana and Jimmy and Michelle Palmer have left for a month at the Saint Francis Retreat House in West Virginia.  
>Rated R or NCis-17<br>Please Review.

In the Hearts of Men  
>by JMK758<br>Chapter One  
>Fishing<p>

Wednesday oh-one-hundred isn't much different from Tuesday thirteen hundred, Janet DuBois decides as she turns the rotating stool seat to swivel her out to face the bar room, extends one high heeled foot to the floor and shifts some weight off the stool. Since her dress' tight hem reaches perhaps an inch long of getting her arrested, it's a long expanse of legs she displays to the dim room.

The clinging dress is so generous in front it took a long time to find a bra that didn't show. She'd been going for slutty but respectable, and to keep up that latter meant she couldn't look like a slut.

This lavender dress is, in fact, from her Undercover wardrobe, an indulgence since she's not on duty, but she'd felt like a challenge. She was in the mood to put out bait, but the only hits she was going to consider were the ones who made eye contact first and had the integrity to hold it. Anyone who looked first at her breasts or long, well displayed legs wasn't going to get his first nibble.

She knew she was, in a fit of frustrated perversity, setting up a nearly impossible challenge, so she knew she had no one to blame but herself when Prince Charming failed to put in an appearance or, if he did appear, that he was unequal to the challenge.

Sitting on the stool, rotated to face the patrons while she rests her back against the bar, which accents her chest, she slowly scans from left to right. Some eyes are on her, some of those men who aren't alone very likely thinking themselves discreet enough for their dates not to notice, but not one pair of eyes is raised as high as her shoulders.

x

Giving up with an exasperated sigh - things would have been so different had Lisa come with her - she steps off the stool, reaches into her small lavender purse, pushes aside leather Badge and ID case and Sig Sauer, takes out her wallet and tosses onto the bar behind her an appropriate number of fives.

She stands and tugs her dress hem down. The lavender material may hug her body like the lover she's going to do without tonight, but while it caresses her butt like a hand, the hem still tends to want to be a waistline. At least the material is stretchy enough so that a downward tug doesn't expose her nipples.

Janet leaves the bar and turns right, but after walking about fifteen yards and before she turns the right corner she looks back, inspects the deserted street. She may have, she reflects, planned her night stupidly, but she's not stupid.

No one has followed her.

x

Her high heels click rhythmically on the quiet and empty street. One o'clock may feel like one in the afternoon - mid-July heat never dissipates enough before sunrise brings the next hot wave to assault the body and exhaust the mind - but this side street is private houses and everyone is trying to sleep beyond softly whirring air conditioners.

Keys in hand, three of the sharpest long since extended between the fingers of her closed fist, she reaches her black Tesla Model S, grateful to find that those in front and back haven't pulled in so affectionately as to allow her no way to leave.

Depositing her bag on the seat beside her, pulling her dress down though it still doesn't protect her from the vinyl - she should have brought a towel - she turns on the car, the first thing coming on being the air conditioner. She reduces it from its 1900 setting and pulls out, heading for home.

Oh six thirty comes way too early these days.

xx

Finding a parking space on her block near 15th Street NW is rarely a challenge since the three six story multi-dwelling buildings have their below ground garages and most of the private houses that line either side of the street have their own private garages. Indeed, there are many spaces available to choose from and after turning onto the block she selects the first available one on her left, quite a few yards short of her building on the right.

Her building is a six story monster, eight units per floor, but before she gets out she inspects the street. The only sign of life is an already parked car with its interior lights lit several cars ahead of her on the same side. In fact, she considers that if she'd been a minute earlier that spot, opposite her door, would have been hers.

Before she gets out, feeling the wave of ennui that has everything to do with her bed being less than five minutes away, she sees the interior lights of that other car go out, the door open and a man cross the street to her own building. She doesn't recognize him but even in the high street lights she's by no means too tired to recognize a Marine Fatigue Uniform shirt.

'Maybe I _should_ know him' she decides as she gets out, wondering if she's totally wasted the evening worse than she'd thought she had if a Marine lives right in her building. He'd certainly committed himself to that building before she'd gotten out of her car so, far from being a potential danger, he's not only 'harmless' but someone she definitely wants to meet.

She hurries across the street, her heels clicking a rapid staccato beat on the asphalt. Okay, maybe one twenty something isn't exactly really _late_. The next seconds, if she can catch him before he boards the elevator, will determine all.

x

She hurries to the outer door as he's passing the inner. He looks back and holds the door for her to pass through after him and she glances to take in about six feet, one eighty trimmed down lean and probably hard. They exchange quiet, meaningless half-words and go to the elevator across the lobby.

The lobby is a spacious one, with a faux fireplace decorating the left side. There's a marble stepped staircase directly before her, the elevator to the right of that. There are mailbox compartments to her right and then around the corner near the right main floor apartments, and a second marble staircase leading to the west side apartments

He pulls the black metal elevator door open and holds it for her to board first. She doesn't select a floor; she'll let him go all the way to his destination, then select her floor when she's alone. But her heart jumps when he chooses six, the top floor, her floor.

She tries not to allow wonder at her good fortune to show on her face. Must be discreet. The car starts its usually too slow ascent and he doesn't look at her any more than she does him.

Very conscious of her small, quite low dipping lavender dress, high hem displaying her long legs to what had been, at the bar, her best advantage, she stands with her back to the rear wall. He's standing at the right side wall, looking across, she's looking out to the door, not at him on her right. She's catching glimpses of his eyes in profile, he's glancing at her legs and she's not minding a bit. She won't say anything, she'll note what apartment he goes to and then start thinking about how she'll meet him.

Her gaze flickers to the name stitched onto his uniform shirt, KURLAND, and she suddenly remembers she'd been annoyed all night at the eyes that too rarely rose above her shoulders.

She looks up, never sees the hard fist, just the flare in her left eye. The pain in the back of her head from her skull bouncing off the metal wall comes even before that in her eye.

She's stunned. Fighting back is automatic for an Agent, but before she can get a hand up her right eye flares, her head crashes again into the steel wall. Blind, she tries to fight but the fist explodes into her left cheekbone, the right side of her jaw and, teetering on her high heels, she feels herself start to fall as another punch to her left eye slams her head for a fifth time into the steel and the world turns off.

xx

Amy Ellyson locks her door to Apartment F6 at precisely 7:32. She crosses the short hallway to the stair well. A woman of precise habit, she is set to catch the 7:41 bus which will take her to work and the breakfast cart where she'll get her coffee and croissant at exactly 8:51. She'll be at her desk at 8:56 and ready to begin the day on the razor's edge of 9:00.

She doesn't take the elevator, never has, because the machine is never precise. People get on at all, or most, or few floors and throw her time completely off. She only uses the stairs which, taken in her high heels, allows her to reach the lobby in 51 seconds and be on the street at 7:34:11.

She pushes the stair well door open. Nothing can change her rate of descent except the bloody woman's nude body sprawled upon the half flight marble landing before her.

Amy can't move. She knows she should be screaming, fit to make every tenant in the building come running, but try as she does she can't get her body to move an inch or that scream to come.

The woman's long black hair is fanned out about her head like an Aztec goddess' headdress, mingled and matted in a pool of dark red, almost maroon blood. Her face is covered in masses of blood and is barely recognizable as a face. Her light purple dress is torn or cut from neck to hem and laid out to both sides. Her body is thickly covered in over a hundred bruises like an obscene checkerboard.

There's more blood on the marble landing from between her widely spread legs than from her face or behind her head. She's gagged by her white bra wrapped around her head and Amy can see pink material has been stuffed into the still woman's open mouth, held in place by the tightly wound bra.

She manages to break her stunned, fearful paralysis enough to raise her left hand and look at her watch. 'Damfukinhellshitandamn! This is really gonna make me late!'

xxx

Doctor Jeanne Benoit waits by the Main Reception desk near the entrance to Monroe University Hospital. It's 9:35 and she's been waiting since her initial call, knowing from experience with Tony DiNozzo that the wait will be very short.

When her patient had been brought in by MPDC, first concerns in the ER had been to stabilize, then identify. By the time the patient's identity and its significance had filtered to her, the woman's condition had been determined and a prognosis reached. Now, while others could begin less immediate and hurried treatment, she has time to notify 'next-of-kin'.

In this case that term is inaccurate, though Tony has referred many times to his fellow Agents sometimes being as close, or closer, than family, but the rules in Washington regarding Federal Agents are specific.

She sees a familiar red haired woman approaching the door, her face as fiery as her hair. She's known her for quite a few months, spoke to her less than half an hour ago, and though she doesn't know the tall, thin grim man who walks beside NCIS' Director, she can make an informed guess.

She knows, at least, that the grim - no, angry woman approaching the sliding door will not want a lengthy story and so she's composed a succinct enough statement. In this, her time with Tony has been very helpful.

The door between them slides open and Benoit steps forward, hands raised. "She's alive and she'll live."

x

Shepherd and the other man seem to collide, for an instant, against a transparent wall and in that instant tension resets from a million down to about a hundred. Minds reset, they can evidently deal now with lengthy explanations and answers. "How is she?" Shepherd asks, her words clipped.

'Well, maybe not one hundred, maybe five hundred but no longer a million.'

"Serious, not Critical and she is not in danger of death," Jeanne emphasizes again. "She's going to be moved from ER and be Admitted to a room," she checks her watch, "within the next quarter hour."

"When can we see her?" the tall man asks.

"I'm sorry," Director Shepherd says, though it's momentarily uncertain whom she's speaking to. "This is Supervisory Special Agent Kevin Lamb, he's Special Agent Levy's Team Leader."

"Good to meet you. You can't see her until after she's been Admitted. ER is very busy at the moment but as her boss you can assist with the Admittance process, expedite that. We can't sedate her because of probable concussion, but she won't be able to answer many questions.

"How badly hurt is she?"

She's not sure how much Medical knowledge this woman has but she does know she detests being spoken down to as much as she does long-winded answers. She supposes that's why they get along. "Fractured left and right parietal and occipital bones. Broken left zygomatic, left clavicle, six fractured ribs; four left, two right, several others bruised. Middle and ring fingers of her right hand broken in three places, imprint on her hand, looks like he stomped on it. Damage to labia majora and minora, cervix _and_ uterus. He must be a bull."

"That will... be enough, Doctor. Thank you." There can be no answer to this. Shepherd looks up to Lamb. His face is stony and she suspects he's on the edge of erupting in fury. She's about as close.

"When she's in a room," Benoit continues, "I'll have someone take you. In the meantime, would you follow me plea–?"

"You go on with her," Shepherd tells Lamb as she pulls her cell phone from her pocket. "I'll catch up."

"Yes, Director." His voice is as rocky, and as he walks beside her Benoit sees him pull out his own cell phone.


	2. Trained by Ducky

Chapter Two  
>Trained by Ducky<p>

Doctor Maura Isles, clad in her royal blue scrubs, turns on the overhead lamp above the middle silver Autopsy table, illuminating the man's clothed body in an intense field of light. The many bulbs backed by a mirrored circle are positioned to cast no shadows into body cavities, regardless of where they must aim.

The man's body has been delivered by two Agents. The initial investigation was done by MPDC and inherited by Special Agent Fred Higgins and his Team, not that they're any happier about the fractured Chain of Evidence than she is. The DC AME and the Death Investigator had seen the body on site, she had not. She's seeing it for the first time now.

She detests not seeing a body _in situ_;there's so much information lost, never to be recovered if Metro's Assistant ME or the Death Investigator was inefficient or unobservant. She will have to make do with the written report and photos - when they arrive.

She's annoyed that the body was delivered sans notes from the City Medical Examiner's office. She's Boston's ME and would never consider separating body from report. However, this is DC, America's Capital City of Bureaucratic Inefficiency, so when she'd called the Morgue she'd determined, after twenty-three minutes of being passed, as Jane Rizzoli would say, from flunky to lackey and back again, that she has little choice but to endure the oft repeated assurance that the report of the Death Investigator will be sent as soon as possible.

"Why do I have the feeling that Ducky took DC's only competent ME with him to Scotland?"

x

She's never met Jordan Hampton, has only Jimmy's stories about her, but she knows Ducky and his standards. She doesn't believe he would associate himself on a personal level with someone of this Bureaucracy's level of efficiency.

Now the woman's Assistant...

Speaking of Assistant, she suspects she and her new 'Acting Assistant' Samantha Sky - whom she still has yet to meet - will finish their investigation and have a report for Special Agent Higgins long before they receive the preliminary reports they need in order to begin.

The body before her is intact save for a wash of blood spread over the young man's chest, maroon-blackish but still damp. It will be many more hours before the clothes dry completely. Until then, the blood is tacky to the touch, and that not absorbed by material has separated into a maroon, gelatin-like mixture surrounded by pale yellow serum.

x

She looks up when the pneumatic doors across the suite before her slide open. She'd doubts Agent Higgins would be this impatient for a report. Jane Rizzoli might be, especially if Lieutenant Cavanaugh were riding her, but it's unrealistic that anyone would expect anything this soon beyond 'He's dead.'

It's not Agent Higgins or any of his team who comes through the door, it's a petite young woman wearing a tan mini skirt and jacket over white blouse, carrying a matching purse and sporting a pale blonde pixie haircut.

"_Hi_! How _are_ you?" the newcomer asks in vast delight, eyes flashing from hers to cover every square inch of the room in three seconds before returning to hers. "I'm so sorry I couldn't come right down. When I worked with Ducky all my paperwork was at 'Pass and ID' but since then its been put in storage and I had to start from scratch. They wouldn't even take Abby's vouching for me because I'm not working in the Lab."

Maura's already been alerted, long before Jimmy Palmer left yesterday for his own vacation to Virginia, to this young woman's arrival this morning. She does wonder, however, how the young woman can say all that without the slightest hint of rancor at this newer example of bureaucratic inefficiency. She'd be grumbling, certainly not smiling as though she'd come off a free tour of the Yard.

This, then, can only be "Doctor Samantha Sky?"

"Yeppers. Sammy," she says, crossing the room with extended hand. "Feel free to skip the 'doctor'; I do unless I'm examining someone. You must be Doctor Isles."

"Maura." She pulls off the glove and shakes the hand of her new Assistant.

Though she has people working with her, she's never worked in close association with an _Assistant_ in Boston - Susie Chang isn't an ME - but this is an NCIS regulation.

At least Jimmy Palmer and Sammy Sky are MDs; she doesn't have the inclination to take on a true Apprentice, but from the excited / delighted expression on the young woman's face, this is going to be interesting.

Sky looks about Autopsy again. "It's so _great_ to be back."

x

Samantha - _Sammy_ - is small, five foot two might be a generous estimate with her tan high heeled shoes, but her bright manner makes up for much. She seems girl-like in her enthusiasm, but Jimmy's already mentioned she's 22. Maura notes the woman's pale blue eyes, a most uncommon characteristic even among Nordic blondes. Only 1.73 percent of true Nordic blondes have coloring this light, and that's including males. She thinks it's about 1.08 percent of women. Sky's hair, worn in a pixie style, is the palest blonde she's seen in years, and it's her natural color as a close look reveals. Any dying, to pass that inspection, would have to be done this week and no dye retains properly, though most claim to, the subtle differences of pigment in individual, mingled strands.

Isles had learned a little about the young doctor from Jimmy, notably that they'd completed their Doctorates on the same day this past spring, but mostly she'd received from him a warning that Sky's enthusiasm and general glee are survivable only in limited doses.

"I've missed this place so _much_," Sky exclaims.

"I've never heard anyone express such enthusiasm about working in Autopsy," she says, ignoring the fact that she'll be glad to get back to her own the week after next. She's leaving the Friday after next, will have that weekend to rest up unless Jane Rizzoli has a case she absolutely must assist with. She wouldn't mention the return, but since she lives with Jane's mom it's not that easy.

"Well, maybe not Autopsy per se, but Ducky and Jimmy and the rest of the gang."

"Well, you'll have Ducky back in two weeks."

"Oh _No_!" she exclaims, hands up, a response Maura would attribute to repenting from mortal offense. "That shouldn't have come out the way it sounded!"

"Don't worry," she assures her with a smile intended to help ease the sting, "it didn't."

"Well," Sky says hurriedly, apparently vastly relieved, and focuses her attention, in an attitude of desperate diversion, upon the body on the table beside them, "who do we have with us this morning?"

Maura leads her new Assistant to their guest. "Private First Class Samuel Villahaze, USMC. Metro PD has called it a mugging last night. It's Special Agent Higgins' case."

"You poor man," she says to the still corpse. "Don't you worry, NCIS will find out who did this to you. You'll tell us everything and we'll get you justice."

x

"Trained by Ducky, weren't you?" Maura has very occasionally spoken to a corpse, maybe the result of her exposure to the man, but Ducky has, she believes, never failed to have long and deep discussions with a client.

"Oh, he's just the _sweetest_ man, and _the_ smartest ME on the _entire_ East Coast. Have you known him long?"

"A few years."

"You're from Washington?"

"No, the East Coast."

"That's - Oh, _no_!" Again the hands go up in defense. "Shoot! That's not what I _meant_!"

"Don't worry about it." Jimmy also told her that Sky is fluent in the language of emphatics and she now understands what he'd meant. Sammy seemingly hasn't failed to hit one yet. "Actually, I'm from Boston."

Sky looks up at her quizzically. "I thought Bostonites pronounced it 'Baawston."

"Bostonians, and where'd you hear that?"

"On M*A*S*H, Major Charles Emerson Winchester."

She hopes David Ogden Stiers' character is not the young woman's sole training in Bostonians or she's going to be clearing up a lot of misconceptions during their time together. "You like M*A*S*H?"

"It was my first exposure to Doctors and inspired me to study medicine."

"Really?"

"Yes. Especially the way the Doctors and Nurses relate after hours. I _love_ getting mashed."

x

The double entendre, played so broadly, makes Maura laugh. Working with this woman is going to be an experience.

"Well then, I'd better get dressed." She starts for the silver door to the storeroom in the rear of the suite, but halts as quickly as she'd begun and spins back on one high heel. "It's going to be _great_ working together!"

She hurries in and is gone before Maura can answer, before she can even wonder what the petite woman will change into. Beyond a purse, she's bare handed and at five foot two even Ducky's scrubs would be far too large on her, except in the region where they'll be much too small. Jimmy's 'extra talls' would be comedic unless, or even if, she turned up the hems, and she expects Sky will strain that shirt too.

xxx

Supervisory Special Agent Kevin Lamb waits in the hospital's hallway, a long, unbroken path through six long sections while nurses and orderlies settle their patient from a gurney to bed. The hospital covers a full city block and this is one of two coridors that run the entire length, when his attention is pulled to activity far down the long corridor. Someone, more than three sections away has charged around the corner at an elevator bank, sped around three too slowly moving people and is coming very quickly

SA Lisa DuBois does not run in that awkward front-of-foot slide that some women call running. When she runs it's like she's chasing - and will bring down - an Olympic Sprinter.

He's thankful the corridor isn't crowded, a dozen people along its length whom she easily evades to brake eight feet away, sliding to a stop in front of him. Her face is deep red and so wet it looks like she's been hosed down even in the air conditioned building. He wonders where she'd begun her run and thinks he'd believe any hyperbolic answer.

"Whereisshehowisshewhat's goingonwhatthehellhappened?"

"Lisa-"

"Kevin, _what happened to her_?"

"She was raped and beaten." Though he tries to say it dispassionately, he realizes it makes it sound worse than if said with the rage broiling in him since before he arrived. He wants to lash out, but he has to hold his control until she recovers hers. She doesn't seem on the way toward cooling any anger.

"_Where is she_?" she forces between gritted teeth.

He points behind her, and when she looks he can still see her in semi-profile and her face deepens to scarlet. Now her gasped words are curses as she stares at what she can see of their partner being readied on the bed.

"She was found on her building's stairwell, between her floor and the one below." DuBois is clenching her fists so tightly her arms shake and the steady string of whispered expletives grows more fiery. "Lisa?"

She whirls on him, her red face contorted in horrific rage. "She asked me to come with her last night. She _asked_ me and I blew her off - because I was too _tired_!"

"Lisa, I need you thinking."

"I'm thinking, all right, Kev. I'm _thinking_ I'm going to get this bastard, rip his cock and balls off and stomp on them!"

"Well, I agree with you, but before we go in there you're going to have to get this under control or we're not going to do her any good. So I need you to think _other_ happy thoughts."

x

By the time a Nurse indicates they can enter Lisa DuBois's complexion is back to normal, though she refuses to try for a painted on smile. When they're in and see their partner completely, they both realize that effort would have been wasted.

Lisa sees Janet's face and it takes every bit of control she has to keep from crying.

The white blanket is pulled up to their partner's immobilized neck. Janet Levy's head and face are so wrapped that only her eyes and mouth are visible. Her head is encased in thick plaster protecting four skull fractures and her broken left cheekbone, then her head and face are so swathed in gauze wrappings distorting the planes of her face that except for the familiar brown eyes, swollen nearly closed as they are, it could be any stranger behind the white mask.

Her right hand is encased in a metal lined band which immobilizes her middle and ring fingers. Kevin knows, and will enlighten Lisa later, of the ravages the blankets cover, the plaster protecting her broken collar bone, the thick bands that encase her torso protecting fractured ribs, as well as the scores of contusions and bruises that cover the entire front of their friend's body.

"Jan?" Lisa whispers. "Jan, I am so _sorry_."

Only Janet's eyes can move. The bed is angled slightly so she can see her visitors without having to try to pick up her head.

"Not... your... fault," the woman whispers slowly, not moving her lips, each word a long breath. Her front teeth touch and cannot separate, her broken jaw locked.

Kevin doesn't like what he's hearing. "Janet, are you in a lot of pain?"

She starts a motion that might have been a nod, but stops it immediately. Her wince brings on a gasp and that causes an explosion of pain through her body centered in her ribs. It's a minute before her body relaxes, before the very unnecessary "Yessss."

He turns to Lisa. "I'm going to hunt up some pain killers. Stay here."

He's gone in an instant, and Lisa looks after where he'd left. "Where am I going?" When she looks down, Janet's trying to smile.

"Don't... make me... laugh. Please."

x

A sound at the doorway attracts Lisa's attention and she sees Director Jennifer Shepherd enter with a white coated man. He approaches the bed, says 'hello' to Lisa but then focuses his attention on his patient. "Ms. Levy, I'm Doctor Peter. Do you remember me?"

"Yesss," she whispers, sounding tired.

"I need you to stay awake. I told you, you have a concussion. I know it's difficult, but until we're sure you're out of danger you must try your best to stay awake."

"We'll keep her awake, Doctor." Shepherd declares. "You may be sure of that."

"Are you in pain?"

"Yesss."

"Special Agent Lamb has gone to get something for the pain," Lisa tells him. "Is there anything you can give her so she can sleep through this?"

"I'm sorry, for the time being she must remain awake. The best way of ensuring that-"

"_That's not_-!"

"Agent DuBois." Lisa looks at Shepherd and finds the command, though silent, to be firm.

Doctor Peter finishes his brief but thorough examination before Lamb returns with word that a nurse will administer something for the pain once the doctor prescribes it.

"I'll be back shortly," he tells the agents. "The nurse will be in. Remember what I told you about seeing she stays awake."

"We'll see she's well cared for," Shepherd assures him.

x

When he's gone Shepherd signals Lamb and the door is closed, shutting out the ambient noise, soft as it had been. She steps close to the bed, waits until Levy's swollen, darkened eyes shift to her. "Age– Janet, do you know who did this to you?"

"Marine..." she whispers so softly the three Agents are sure they missed it. NCIS Agents are tasked to protect Marines and those who depend upon them.

"Are you saying it was a Marine?" she asks, hoping the answer will be 'no'.

"Yessss."

Lamb and DuBois surround the bed closely and Shepherd sees in their eyes the same dread she feels.

"Do you know him?"

"No," Levy whispers, barely moving her lips.

Shepherd hadn't wanted the 'no' now. "Can you describe him?"

"White... brown hair... big, hard fists..."

"What was he wearing?"

"Fatigue... uniform. I'm not sure. Don't remember... I... don't remember."

A Fatigue Uniform includes a sewn on identification patch. "Did you see his name?" Silence, a heart tearingly long silence as her swollen eyes search the past.

"Cu...? Cu...? Cur...?" She sighs and it makes her wince, then gasp for several seconds as she reaches for her ribs under the high blanket. "I don't remember."

Shepherd backs off, leaving Janet to her partners, and flips open her cell phone. The speed dialed call is answered after the first ring. "Cynthia, have Agent Jackson start an Initial Search. So far all we have is a Marine, Caucasian, brown hair, name may begin C - U - R."

She knows an Initial Search will do little more than exclude women, Asians, Blacks and those with other than brown hair, but Investigations are often a matter of excluding anyone who couldn't have done it, and then using better evidence to whittle the list down further until they're focused on a true suspect. It's too much to hope for that they can get down below a thousand with what little they have, even with the partial name, but from this moment forward the search is on - and someone will be found.

xxx

The ring of the elevator's annunciation bell in the Operations Division provides only a few seconds warning to any who might have been anticipating the arrival of NCIS' ecstatic Forensic Scientist.

"_Gang_!" Abby cries at the bullpen entrance as she rushes in and is so quickly around Ziva's desk the woman only has time to get half out of her seat before she's caught in an exuberant hug. Gibbs is able to reach the front of his desk before they collide, she with a clinch that might squeeze the breath from a smaller man. "Oh, I missed you so much!"

"We missed you too, Abs," he manages to press out before she's gone in a dash across the bullpen to hug Tony.

"Easy, Abs, I'm still in recovery!" He can't slow or deflect her rush but manages to get his arms protectively against his sides to push outward against her hug. Yesterday was his first day back at work following his poisoning and subsequent confinement in MedStar hospital.

She pulls away, contrite. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry." Yesterday had been a day of changes. She'd come back to DC yesterday, Tuesday, the same time Tony had returned to duty, and the Palmers had left yesterday morning for a month's long 'rest leave' at Saint Francis Retreat House in West Virginia.

When she'd left the apartment this morning her roommate Sammy Sky was extra enthused - itself a staggering thing - about spending the month covering for Jimmy in Autopsy. They'd driven in separately since schedules are impossible to predict, but also for safety.

It's a real question which of them was more enthused to be coming into NCIS this morning.

She turns an instant later to run to Tim, who's had the most time to prepare for the collision. "McGEE!"

Preparation is relative when it comes to Abby, who when she gets revved up can be described as stunningly enthusiastic. When she really gets going, as now, she is formidable. "I think I missed you most, Tiny Tim," she says as she hugs him. "Is Siobhan pregnant yet?"

"Uh-"

She turns him loose and turns on Tony. "I don't have to ask you, Tony. Three days in a hospital bed with your own private doctor."

"I was in MedStar," he protests the assumption, though the image is not at all objectionable. "Jeanne works at Monroe U."

"Who's talking about working hours?" she asks with a salacious smile. He finds that no more objectionable. "I just want the date of Jeanne's Shower." Now that assumption is deflating, but Abby's not done and not taking hints. "Well, you can tell me later, I've got to get through a lot of friends before work piles up. Bye for now!"

She's gone before either man can reply and they're left staring at one another, unsure of which is the more stunned.

"What just happened?" Tony asks.

"Abby's discovered 'Caf-Pow Concentrate!'," Tim decides.

"I'm calling the Pentagon," Tony declares. "They have to implement Def-Con 2."

"Two pregnancy allusions in seven seconds. Do you suppose her biological clock has started?"

"God forbid," Tony shudders. "Abby ever goes into Labor, poor kid'll think he got shot out of a cannon."

Ziva's laugh is cut off by both hands clamped over her mouth, and the chime of Gibbs' desk phone a moment later is like the ringside bell signaling the end of the round. She sobers quickly, however, because whenever line 4 rings it's never good news.

x

"Yeah, it's Gibbs." The seconds before he speaks again are filled with silence from the watching agents. He asks only three succinct questions, writing down the answers. Then the virtually one-sided conference is over. "Grab your gear," he commands even before hanging up.

Biting the bullet, recognizing the extra grim tone, DiNozzo asks "What happened, boss?"

"Special Agent Janet Levy is in Monroe Hospital, Serious Condition. We're gonna get the bastard who put her there."

He halts for a moment. They still have an open case of John Scalici and Mary Waghoff to wrap up - and Waghoff to find. "McGee, stay on the hunt for Waghoff. I want her by tonight."

McGee won't remind him, as he watches the Agents hustle for the elevator, that the girl is flying under the radar. So long as she stays wherever she is, stays off the Internet and avoids contact with known haunts, her family and friends, she remains invisible.

xxx

Maura Isles turns her attention to the External Exam of the corpse before her. Marine PFC Samuel Villahaze appears to be in his mid-20's, though considerably worse for the two puncture wounds in the middle of his chest.

Of course, she's now in the first stage of the External Examination, the fully clothed stage which, in Private Villahaze' case is a sleeveless grey tee shirt, gym shorts, white gym socks and running shoes that've seen better days around four years or so ago.

She noticed when Special Agents Max Crawford and Sol Mitchner had withdrawn him from the black body bag and hoisted him onto the middle silver autopsy table, while Carol Senise briefed her, that the portions of the soles that bore the most burden in running had been worn down to smooth rubber.

She doesn't speculate on this. She doesn't speculate upon anything unless her absolute favorite Detective Jane Rizzoli figuratively backs her into a wall, and even then she tries to limit her speculations to the 'water is wet' variety.

Fortunately Special Agent Higgins isn't the kind to demand answers before the autopsy is finished. He's so unlike Leroy Gibbs, who frequently wants answers before the autopsy's begun.

Of course, the answers about clothes will not be demanded of her. After she makes her notes and takes her photographs, everything not of the body will be bagged and sent up to Forensic Scientist Ruby Rae.

Or is Abby Sciuto back today? She'd heard something about this.

x

PFC Villahaze had suffered considerably last night if what's left of his gym clothes and the torn flesh of his knuckles, statistically those are in 82.521 percent of cases being defensive wounds, seem to indicate.

Having made her initial notes, Maura crosses the suite to the portable X-ray machine as the store room door opens and Samantha returns, clad now in blue short sleeved scrubs quite evidently her size. She notes the younger woman is even more petite than before, having put the protective shoe covers over soft ballet slippers she'd evidently brought folded in her purse.

"I'm so glad Ducky kept these," she says, hands out from her sides. "They had to be special ordered, extra small." She grins. "You should've seen me in his."

"I'm sure you were fine."

"They were long enough to trip over whenever the hems fell," she grins, "and _way_ too tight." Her eyes make it quite plain what portion of the material was insufficient. Maura judges that though Sammy and Abby, who Jimmy told her share an apartment, are five two vs. five ten, they could share bras. "I thought he'd have a conniption trying not to notice."

"He's always very discreet."

"He's a dear." She looks across the room to the still clothed body. "So what's the story with Private Villahaze?"

She pulls the portable X-ray machine closer. "Let's find out."

xxx

When Gibbs, DiNozzo and David walk rapidly down the third floor hospital corridor they don't have to wonder about their already determined destination. Jennifer Shepherd and Kevin Lamb stand outside a partially closed door.

No sooner are greetings exchanged and a brief summary of their fellow agent's condition given than the door opens and Lisa DuBois steps out. "The nurse will do her tests and so on. About ten minutes."

"What did you learn?" Lamb asks his agent.

"Her memory's scrambled. She remembers only a Marine Fatigue uniform. He entered the building ahead of her, pressed the button for her floor. She thought he lived there but I spoke to Hendricksen who checked the Corps registry of Marines who live off Washington bases. There are no Marines living at that address."

"He targeted her," Lamb declares.

"I have a CS team going over the stairwell, elevator, everywhere," Shepherd tells the five. "Jethro, your team is now Auxiliary to Lamb's; you will render every assistance. I'm assigning Special Agents Kelman's and Arnell's teams to this case on the Beta and Gamma shifts. Twenty four hour work until someone brings in this bastard."

"Gibbs." Lamb glances at DiNozzo and David.

"Rule 38, your case, your lead."

"Lisa, Ziva, Tony, you're with me. We'll blanket her building and neighborhood. Someone saw something."

"I have McGee tied on a case. If he's not making progress I'll cut him loose and get him out there."

"You four leave now," Shepherd directs. "I'll get agents out here to stay with Agent Levy, both for Protection and to keep her alert. Gibbs, when they get here you're with me. When we get back to HQ we'll coordinate the search. I'm calling in some Markers."

No one needs it spelled out. FBI, CIA, CGIS, OSI, CID; no one likes it when an Agent goes down, and going down like this stokes the fire.


	3. Double Teaming

Chapter Three  
>Double Teaming<p>

Part one of the External Examination on Private Villahaze having revealed its limit on the gym clothes, those were removed for transport to the lab upstairs and the Veteran and Apprentice MEs began work on part two, the external body exam. The clothes were rolled to trap particles invisible to the naked eye, and they were brought up by Sammy to join the body bag, long since delivered upstairs.

X rays were immediately taken from all angles of the stripped body and sent upstairs for developing. Sammy, back from delivering clothes and film, now wields the clipboard, marking wounds and injuries on the forward and backward male image with corresponding marks while adding notes of Maura's observations even though her words are recorded by the microphone hanging over their heads.

Then the body is washed. In this the two women simply take sides. There are many bruises that the brief clothing had still hidden.

"Last guy I washed was a lot bloodier," Sammy muses, using a sterile sponge and cleaning solution that won't interfere with the usual post mortem tests.

"Accident victim?"

"S&M Scene that got way out of hand." She giggles at Maura's expression. "No, seriously, it was a mugging in Arlington."

Actually the first answer had been true, but she decides not to freak out the woman before she knows if she'll be freaked out. Abby, and others, have warned her about the follies of over-sharing, usually after it's too late.

xx

A short while later they stand before the returned X-rays set on the light wall for examination.

"There they are," Sammy says, pointing to the two small bright spots on the film.

"Look like .22s" Sammy says, pointing to the two small bright spots on the film.

"You don't ever want to speculate. Ours is an exact science, and the film can distort. A slight variance in the angle can mean the difference between a .22 and a .45. I've known .45s to look like .22s even after extraction because the outer shell was stripped off, leaving only the cores."

"Yes, ma'am."

"That's one reason why I never give a definitive answer in the field, or before my autopsy is finished... no matter whom that might aggravate. My first private guesses are wrong too many times. If I articulated them prematurely, not only would I send Investigators in the wrong directions but I'd lose my effectiveness."

"I understand."

"You must cultivate an air of wisdom and competence, even if you have to send people away a dozen times until you are sure and you're confident you're sure."

"Yes, doctor," she says, now thoroughly subdued.

"They punched through the sternum, didn't get much further."

"I saw no powder burns on the shirt. How far do you get when shooting someone in a mugging?"

"Closer than this. I suspect we've found more questions than answers for Agent Higgins."

As if in answer to the mystic summons, they hear the pneumatic doors slide open behind them. But when the women turn, it's not to see the man they were anticipating.

x

Leroy Jethro Gibbs steps through the glass and metal doors, already deep in a foul mood and displeased to see two blue scrubs clad women standing before the X-ray board. That this is no different than he'd anticipated does nothing to improve his mood.

The smaller of the two women - aren't scrubs supposed to prevent telling male from female? - hops in a quick turn. "Agent GIBBS!" is her delighted cry. She hurries halfway to him before she halts, sliding a bit in her bootie-covered soft ballet slippers, probably finally seeing his scowl, yet still flings her arms wide in presentation. "I'm _baaa-ack_," she sings.

"So I see," he answers with as little tone as he can manage. This doesn't save him from a hug even more enthusiastic than her tone.

"Oh, I've missed you."

"Saw you last month."

"I _know_! But I was just a visitor then," she pulls back enough to look up at him. "Now I'm officially here for a month."

He might as well be civil. It's not that she's bad, maybe she can't help it. "Welcome back. Chicky."

She grins, her arms still about his waist in a far too familiar clinch. "I'm so glad you remember. Actually, you're the only one who _ever_ calls me Chicky."

He remembers why. It had been the result of a fight between them and his acknowledgment of her worth. She'd been alone at a Crime Scene while Ducky was in Court giving testimony in an unrelated case and he'd decided she was too new an apprentice to work the scene without supervision. Wet behind the ears girl trying to be an ME had been his thought. She'd had the courage to stand up to him, to openly fight him since she was Ducky's apprentice, had been assigned to the duty by Ducky and answered to Ducky, not to him. That had earned her his respect.

She'd offered, when they'd made peace, that though she wasn't Ducky if he liked he could call her 'Chicky'.

As the battle had been private, no one else knew the reason for the nickname and his team is collectively too smart to ask.

But this unselfconscious position on her part, leaning out from him, only makes him uncomfortable. He hadn't thought reconnecting with her - for a month - could get worse than the initial prospect.

It is.

x

He looks past her, over her head in fact, to Isles still at the light board. How dare the woman grin at him as though she can read his desire to put distance between himself and Sky, preferably several States?

Is it Abby's influence since the pair started living together, or has Sky always hugged so unreservedly and he'd just been spared? No, that can't be it. He feels he hasn't been spared anything from Sky.

His glare finally moves the ebullient young woman away, but though she disengages herself she's not the slightest subdued. Looks that have cowed Active Duty Marines seem to be deflected by her ecstasy shields.

He moves her aside by her shoulders, but as he approaches Isles Sky still paces him. For the first time he misses Jimmy Palmer; the man may be annoying, but he's never shown any inclination to hug. Probably has a much better developed sense of survival.

Still, Sky isn't bad - in small and very occasional doses - and she does know her job and is reasonably competent - for a Probie. It's that she reminds him of a perpetually too ecstatic puppy. How she and Abby, both so alike, can live together in the same four room apartment without mutually self-combusting is a mystery he fears solving.

There's a pool, but thus far the women have frustrated any potential winner.

He fixes his glare on Isles, mentally pushing Sky aside. But rather than saying anything useful, she says "You seem somewhat more annoyed than usual."

"Having an Agent get raped and the hell beaten out of her will do that."

x

Both women look at him as though he'd punched them, and this makes him rein it in.

"My God," Isles is the first to recover her voice. "What happened?"

"Still piecing it together. She'll live, but that's the only good part."

"Does she need anything?" As an ME there's little she does for the living, but she and Sky are both MDs and Villahaze is not going anywhere.

"Us to catch the bastard that did it."

"Anything," she says.

"I need an evaluation of Agent Levy's condition, whatever you can learn about the attack."

"Do you have the hospital records?"

"They're being sent." His tone says he's not holding his breath.

"I'll look them over the moment they come in," Maura says, making sure Gibbs catches her glance at Private Villahaze.

xxx

"Just came from Sky and Isles," Gibbs says as he enters Abby's lab, grateful that it's her he sees rather than Ruby Rae. At least some part of NCIS has returned to normal.

"Don't you mean Isles and Sky?" He won't take the bait. "Come on, Gibbs, Maura's not bad." Beyond honey blonde hair, Maura Isles is unnervingly identical to the late Caitlin Todd.

"You screamed the first time you saw her."

"I'm allowed to scream; I'm a girl, not a quasi-macho Federal Agent."

"Who's discussing DiNozzo?"

She gets her hand up in time to cover her sputter. "Good one."

"What've you got, besides an excellent tan."

She smiles at him. "Thanks for noticing. There was this great nude beach Dawn knows outside Ca-"

"Abs."

She mimes a pout. "Tony would've let me tell him."

"DiNozzo would've been on the first flight."

"Then he'd have been disappointed; kittens only and his badge wouldn't've helped even if he had a place to put it. _Meanwhile_, the CS team did a great job with minutia," she says quickly, derailing any possible reply. "I got enough hairs for a decent mustache, though since the individual hairs average about two inches it'd be on the way to a Fu Manchu, or possibly a Ming the Merciless. I think Janet got at least one good handful of brown hair. Hopefully your guy is sporting a monk's skull cap but I wouldn't count on it."

He's not interested in Fu Manchu or skull caps. "Can you get any DNA?"

"I have dozens of follicles to choose from, and I'm checking now for texture and coloring. There's no dye; that I can tell you right off, and it's straight, no curl. That's about it for now for hairs."

"When will you have the DNA?"

"Tomorrow."

"Abs."

"Gibbs, you can't rush Science. You can glare at it, you can yell at it, you can spank it if you feel so inclined and sometimes I am, but you can't rush it. Believe me, I want to, but unless the Doctor materializes his TARDIS here and is feeling generous, sixteen hours stays sixteen hours."

"What Doctor?"

"Not Doctor What, Doctor Who."

He considers trying to sort through this, decides that either her vacation to New Orleans was too long, his to Mexico was too short and too long ago, but the best choice he can make is to give up. "What else?"

She puts her hands on hips, adopts a faux reprimand manner. "Boy, Gibbs, you're as greedy as ever."

"Because you never disappoint."

This breaks her fake with a smile. "Gee, thanks Gibbs. I aim to please."

"You always do."

"I'm waiting for Tony and the others. He called, they're at the scene and I'm hoping they bring me back plenty of goodies."

"Speaking of goodies, what was it about freaking DiNozzo and McGee out over pregnancies?"

"Just a little fun." He shows her with his silence how well he believes that evasion. "Dawn's a kindergarten teacher."

"I know."

"Well, being around virtually every child she taught over five years when we weren't working on our tans..." She gives ample time for a comment but he's not going to indulge her on this either. "I got to thinking I'm not getting younger, but since my schedule doesn't leave much time for dating the best chance I probably have is to become 'Aunt Abby'."

"You've got plenty of time yet. But don't freak out my people, they have enough to think about on this case."

"Okay. You're right." He walks away. "But it's so much fun..."

xxx

SSA Kevin Lamb and SA Lisa DuBois started their search for evidence and ear/eye witnesses on the sixth floor of Janet Levy's building, while Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David focused upon the elevator and the fifth floor, the two teams converging on the stairwell where the worst of the attack was centered.

When this was an MPDC case, to whom the initial report had been conveyed, Patrol Officers and CSI's had secured the half flight landing and, as far as possible, the already contaminated elevator.

It's amazing and frustrating how many people, presented with a blood spattered elevator, will simply ride it to their destinations and either forget or never have cared enough to notice and report the fact. They'd tracked bits of dried blood through the lobby to the front door in steadily decreasing density, over and over, in depths of disregard that had reduced the agents to silence lest they give voice to thoughts best left contained.

By the time Janet Levy had been discovered at 7:32 am and the stairwell secured, an unknowable number of people had so contaminated the box and expanded that scene that there was virtually no point in isolating and processing it..

Nevertheless, it is now known that the Perp selected the sixth floor, and since most departing people will be focusing on 1 and a fairly few people will select 6 before noon, that is the button on which NCIS' CS team directed their most careful attention. The result was a blurred hodgepodge of overlapping images too convoluted to be of any use.

When the four agents converge upon the yellow tape cordoned landing between the fifth and sixth floors, already after 1:30, the scene resembles, to Tony, a set out of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. There are two points of concentrated blood pooled on the landing, one where Levy's head would have come to rest, the other the aftermath of the horrifically brutal rape. But the walls and steps are covered in low velocity blood spatter, much of which has been compromised by EMTs in the limited space who were, quite properly, more concerned with saving a life than in preserving evidence.

NCIS' CS Team has been thorough. From elevator to hall to steps to landing, every spot Janet's assailant might have touched has been examined by various methods for finger and shoe prints, while every inch has been vacuumed with a filtered vacuum, collecting hairs, fibers and other microscopic evidence, all of which has already been turned over to Abby.

They suspect the woman is going to regret Ruby Rae's immediate return to Edenvale.

x

Fortunately there was a several hour gap between the times Levy's assailant had tracked through the blood and her rescuers had arrived. "Here, these'll be good," Tony says, pointing out to Ziva, who holds the large camera with exchangeable filters, five bloody prints that have the best definition. "Tennis shoes."

"Not a regulation uniform."

"Ya think?" he asks, standing in for the absent Gibbs.

Olympus is clearly distinguishable on several of the dried prints.

When he turns to Lamb and DuBois a few steps down on the steps to five, intending to compare notes on the interviews, such as could be done on both floors - far too few and even fewer being cooperative - he sees in the woman's eyes something he's seen too many times when NCIS agents go down, as in the past year it's happened too many times, on that team in particular.

Theirs had been a four agent team, Kevin Lamb had been Senior Field under Bob DiMarco until he'd gone down, and they're still working at three strong.

"Hey, guys, we've got this. Why don't you canvas the neighborhood?"

"What do you mean 'you've got this'?" Lisa DuBois demands, taking a step upward. "You think we can't do this job?"

"You're standing surrounded by your partner's blood," he reminds her, trying to sound reasonable. He can see in her eyes that it's not working.

"Lisa..."

She ignores her boss, coming up to one step short of the landing, her face a foot below the taller man's. "Why, because she's our partner, we care for her and to you two this is just another Crime Scene?"

He keeps his expression soft, his whisper quiet. "Yeah."

He says no more as she stands on the step below him, seething. After a few seconds Lamb takes her elbow and draws her down the steps. But as he opens the fifth floor door she turns back, looks up the stairs, her eyes blazing. "Damn you, DiNozzo."

x

When the door eases shut, Ziva says "You handled that well."

"You picked up on her too."

"I have known Survivor's Guilt, Tony. She blames herself for what happened to Agent Levy. I do not yet know why, but she does."

"Hmmm."

"She hates you now, of course."

"Yeah, I know," he says regretfully. "Still, better to hate me for a couple of weeks than hate herself forever."

xx

Out on the street Kevin Lamb waits for his partner to cool down. That the temperature is flirting with a Daily Record doesn't help. "Want to tell me about it?"

She doesn't look at him. "No, I don't."

"DuBois," his tone, rarely employed with either woman, makes her turn, "that was neither a question nor a request."

She takes a deep breath and her sigh seems to reach down to her knees. She turns to him. "Jan wanted to go out last night, hit a bar or two, maybe do some harmless flirting."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"We'll have to find out. That'll be the first place for us to start."

"You make it sound like a job."

"It is a job. DiNozzo's right. It's a job you know how to do."

"If I'd done my _job_ and backed up my partner instead of blowing her off and going home to bed she wouldn't be laying in a hospital!"

"You can't know that. This didn't happen in a bar or back alley, it happened in her home. You wouldn't have been here."

_"Garbage!"_ she snaps, whirling away.

x

Kevin takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out very slowly and wonders what he can say to a partner more focused on grief and guilt than -

"Kevin, what time is it?"

Rather than considering the odd tone, he checks his watch. "1:43."

She waves her arm expansively, taking up the entire street. "What's wrong with this picture?"

He scans the street, left and right, seeing a mixture of private homes and two more large multi-unit monstrosities like Levy's, one more on this side to their right, one on the other further away. They're outnumbered by dozens of two or three story private homes with driveways with or without garages. Less than half the curbside spaces on the block are occupied by a variety of widely spaced cars. Brown and light blue plastic trash cans line the sidewalk except for the three large buildings where piles of black or blue bags are the standard.

Most of the three story houses which line the street are cookie cutter jobs, all virtually identical to the private garages to the right of each entrance halving the first levels. There are a few houses where people sit on porches or steps, particularly among the two story, single family homes. Children play in small, widely scattered groups. He can find nothing he can call 'wrong' and tells her so.

"What time do they pick up trash by you?"

"The trucks usually roar and wheeze outside my window around five in the morning."

She's staring to their right up the long end of the street. "I'm usually putting the empties back when I'm trying to make the Red Line at six thirty."

"Jan once bitched she doesn't get service until after twelve..."

She looks back to him, their eyes meet, she goes right, he runs left and they're ripping the lids off plastic containers and using knives on the large bags.

x

Tony and Ziva exit the building in matching grim moods. Special Agent Janet Levy probably felt very safe and secure in her home and castle. For all their search so far, they've done little more than reinforce what Metro Police has already determined.

"Well, time to canvass the neighborhood," Tony says as they step to the sidewalk. "We'll find out where Lamb and DuBois have hit and cov–"

He's interrupted by a high War-whoop from the right and looks to see Lisa DuBois standing beside a garbage pail three houses distant. She gives another Whoop of triumph and hoists aloft something green and brown. An instant later Kevin Lamb dashes across their position toward his ecstatic partner. "I think we'd better join the party," Tony concludes, far more optimistic than when they'd stepped out.

"Indeed."

When they're close enough the indistinct object has been opened to become a USMC Fatigue Uniform shirt, the dark stains covering it are half day old splotches of blood and the breast pocket level name tag reads 'KURLAND'

xxx

Janet Levy tries to keep quiet as the hospital bed is elevated a bare six inches so she can see her mother and father without having to lift her head, but the pain is too intense. When an '_arrgh_' forces through her lips the candy-stripe dressed girl releases the button. It had been that or release the shriek clamped behind her teeth as her broken ribs exploded.

"Does it hurt?" the girl asks.

"Of _course_ it hurts," she forces between clenched teeth.

"Here," Sarah Levy says, taking the control from the girl's hand, "we can attend to this. You have done enough. Thank you for your help." She's managed to say it more kindly than she'd thought she could manage; the girl had tried to be helpful.

When the girl leaves, saying 'goodbye' to the two men standing before chairs outside the room, one next to the door and the other across the corridor from it, Sarah reverses the control. Janet clamps her good hand over her mouth, whimpering.

"She means well."

"Stupid girl," Ira says. "If her spine were broken she could have–"

"Hush. Did the Doctor not say we should keep her calm?"

"Calm sounds good right now," Janet whispers past locked teeth. Her jaw had been dislocated and reset, then clamped shut but still hurts too much. She'd nearly dislodged it holding back the screech as her ribs exploded.

x

She wants to scream from the pain. When the bed started moving unexpectedly she'd gasped and her broken ribs - stupid, _stupid_ girl - had flared like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. Only the best discipline had allowed her to clamp back a shriek that should've blown the bricks out of the walls.

She has four skull fractures, six broken ribs that stab her with agony every time she breathes wrongly...

She's seen herself in an upheld mirror. Her head is encased in plaster that makes her look like she has an ancient leather football covering under the gauze that encases her head and face, only her eyes and lips visible. She's not sure she wants to see, today, what the doctors have covered.

Her father comes close on the other side of the bed, he'd moved while she was clenching her eyes shut and now he towers over her, his iron grey beard pointing down to her. For an instant she flashes back to when it was black and she was a tiny girl who so much wanted to be grown up. Right at this moment she would wish to be that girl under her towering father's protection.

She wants to reach out to touch his tallis but can't.

"I wish I knew what to do to help you," he tells her and the longing and regret in his tone almost breaks her heart.

"Just be here," she whispers carefully past set teeth, "and keep me safe from Candy Stripers."

"I shall complain about that stupid girl to the Administrators."

"Daddy, please don't." She watches the outrage slowly fade from his towering face.

"Very well, Janaleh."

"I remember so well the last time you called me that, papa," she whispers in long breaths. It's hard to speak clearly, using only lips, but whispering makes it easier and she wants to say this. "When that bastard Trovillot made up those fake nude pictures of me, I thought that was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to me."

"I am so sorry for not being there for you as you deserved." She hears the depth of regret; he'd been worse than not with her.

"You're here now." She reaches out, feels his strong fingers wrap around her good hand. She's noticed in the past minutes, especially in that long speech, the strained whispers, that she's falling back again into her family's accent, into his accent. She'd worked for a long time to trim it, to disguise her roots - a Federal Agent should sound non-distinguished American - that she's aware of it now, this comfortable return to proper speech.

Maybe she's made a mistake. Maybe she's made a lot of mistakes.

Maybe she's made too many.

She needs not to think of this anymore, or else she's going to cry.

"Please, what is happening at home?"

The conversation turns to trivia, and for a time she can lose herself and forget the loneliness.

She wishes she could forget the pain.

xxx

Abby Sciuto turns from Colonel Centrifuge as two men and two women enter the lab and the Triumph Index in the room ('I really have to design and install a meter') rises. "Hey, gang!" She really hadn't expected Kevin, Tony, Ziva and Lisa at one and the same time, but she'll take what she can get.

She's hugged Tony and Ziva already this morning but has extra reasons to greet Kevin and Lisa with double long greetings. "I feel awful about Janet. How is she?" she asks when she releases Lisa.

"Bad," Lisa tells her. "Very bad."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"You can make her feel better." Lamb says.

"Anything. How?"

He hands her a large, sealed paper Evidence bag within which, when she spreads it, is folded a Marine Fatigue Uniform shirt covered in dark maroon splotches and spatter.

"Confirm who was wearing that so I can put a bullet in him."

"With Jan's Sig," Lisa declares.

x

Abby feels her blood go cold and wants to wrap her white lab coat close about herself as she closes the paper bag, tries to pretend she hasn't heard the intent. "You're not sure it was who the tag says." She very definitely does not make it a question.

"Every son-of-a-bitch in the country wears Marine worn-outs bought from the Salvation Army for two dollars," Lamb sounds personally offended by the fashion statement.

"Yesterday," Lisa says, sounding equally affronted, "I saw a 20 year old kid with tattoos for eyebrows on the Red Line wearing a white short-sleeve shirt with Commander's epaulets."

They've spent years supporting and protecting the Services, but "I want to be sure I've got the right bastard before I ventilate him."

Abby lowers the bag slowly to her side, but it takes her more than ten seconds before she can force out "All right."

x

DuBois follows Lamb out and still Abby can't move. It takes her another fifteen seconds until she can test the room. "Tony? Ziva?"

"Right here, Abs." Tony says from somewhere to her right rear.

"Am I the only one who just got scared half to death?"

"Nope."

"Where's Gibbs?"

"Last word, with the Director. But Lamb has Point on this case."

"I don't care." She turns to face him. "I'm not telling either of them who was wearing this shirt."


	4. Virtual Hunt

Chapter Four  
>Virtual Hunt<p>

When Gibbs reaches the bullpen a little after 1430, Ziva is speaking on her phone and Tony answers the ring on his.

Fortunately there's one Agent left to target and no dearth of questions. "McGee, you find Mary Waghoff yet?"

Whatever the man had been thinking he's effectively distracted from, leaving him with the deer-in-the-headlights expression that's never a good one. "Uh, no, boss."

"You may want to rethink that answer, McDoomed," Tony advises, hanging up his phone. "Corporal Juliette Spencer from the Pentagon has just cleared 'Pass and ID' and is on her way over. I remind you that Marines frequently travel armed."

Ziva quips "Tony, what did Gibbs tell you about entertaining former girlfriends on the job?"

"Good," Gibbs says. "I was going to send for her."

Tony gets the impression that in his surprise announcement - it was certainly a surprise to him when 'Pass and ID' called - he's being spared Ziva's jibe only because Gibbs is in his 'business' mood, his most common state.

When Gibbs had retired to Mexico following the Cape Fear disaster, Tony had been left in charge as Team Leader.

At that time then-Private Spencer had been a minor player in a case but a major hottie in every other respect. He'd asked her out - once the case concluded, of course.

Though the relationship had lasted the usual brief time, it had left her with enough of an impression of him that he was the one she'd called when Airport Baggage Handler and Internet searcher of dates Robert Hastings had been maneuvered into trying to kill her.

That Hastings, by a really wide coincidence also worked for Mrs. and Reverend McGee as a Minister and that the McMuffin had identified him on sight - a surprise to everyone, was just the icing on the 'Torment the Probie' cake.

Though their recent reunion had been slightly discomforting - he's no longer Team Leader and Jeanne Benoit will never be understanding of any thought to pick up the relationship where it had left off - he welcomes any opportunity to see the very comely Corporal.

And when the elevator bell interrupts his reverie, the time has come.

x

The uniformed woman arrives under escort, a plastic laminated 'NCIS Visitor' pass clipped to the lapel of her dress blue uniform jacket. That the Analyst chose to wear her Blues rather than her duty uniform says much about her state of mind.

She gives Tony a warm look but immediately focuses on the boss.

Gibbs rises to meet her. "What can we do for you, Corporal?" He'd considered saying 'thank you for coming' as though he'd sent for her, but he most certainly had not. They're working two cases, short-handed though for the moment most of his team is gathered in one place, not quite as badly strained as before with Tony out but still inconvenient, and it was still inevitable that this meeting would happen. It's an unwanted and unneeded reminder of their lack of progress on the Scalici / Waghoff case.

"I was wondering if you'd made any progress on my case."

"I was about to send for you." He steps over to Michelle's cubicle past McGee's, rolls her chair out from her desk to before his own. "Have a seat." She does so, and the tension that can be hidden while standing is now bereft of camouflage.

When seated, he pulls from his center drawer what he's taken to calling the Puppet Master case file. "You know, Corporal, that two people accessed your identity and that of Robert Hastings, had each of you sending emails you thought were going to the other. You were sending dating stuff, he was receiving requests from the fake you to rape and murder you. He followed up on that, tried to talk you out of it in fact, but you were getting dating stuff from the fake Haystings."

"That's why I called Tony," she says, glancing briefly over her shoulder at the agent before turning back with a hard stare. Her tone and manner clearly say 'why are you repeating what I already know?'

"They did this several times. So far, you're the only one we know of who survived."

The color drains from the Marine's face and he knows she's hit hard. They'd given her no clue earlier in their investigation that this situation had gone beyond herself and Robert Hastings. He selects by fingertip and slides from the closed folder the NCIS photo of late teenaged John Scalici, a moment frozen during an Interrogation. "Do you know him?"

He'd chosen this one of the three on the top of the folder because it has no identifying information but also conveys, without his having to say it, that this perp is in custody.

x

"I don't know," she admits a minute later. "You told me he got my name and picture off the web."

"From your Facebook page from a year back, taken in front of that flower shop. So he made 'you' into a Florist. Are you sure you don't know him?"

She stares at the image again. "Everyone meets so many people." She sets it down. "I can't be sure. I'm sorry."

"We think he's the one who'd been sending you 'hearts and flowers'. Is there anything in any of his emails that sounded familiar?"

"No. I think, if there were, I'd have gotten suspicious."

He finger counts down three pages and slides out an enlarged image of Mary Waghoff's non-driver Washington ID. "What about her?"

Again the long, studious examination. "No. Her I'm sure of. I don't know her."

He's not surprised but it would have been nice. Their concern is that if John Scalici was playing the innocent, then for all his aggravating bluster Mary Waghoff, who portrayed women who wanted to be murdered, preferably after brutal beatings and rapes, is not the stooge but the more dangerous one.

x

"You're still looking for her?"

"We'll find her."

"The problem," DiNozzo interjects from his desk behind her, pulling her attention back "is that she's still out there luring victims like she did you."

"What about a Sting?" she asks him. Seeing no realization, she turns back to Gibbs. "Well, come on, you guys use them all the time, don't you?"

"No."

"_Yes_!" DiNozzo exclaims, coming out and around his desk. "The Sting, 1973, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Directed by George Roy Hill. We make her think Spenser and Haystings are still out there to be killed and set up to take the fall."

"While I tag along," Tim says, getting caught up in Tony's enthusiasm, "and trace her computer as she accesses their emails."

"Hastings shut down his email," Gibbs counters.

"No problem. I can create a false identity in the site he was using for his dating. Make the system think his account is still active."

"Is that legal, McGoogle?"

"Of course not, Tony." He turns to Gibbs. "I'll only need temporary access, then I can shut it down again."

"How long will it take?" Gibbs asks.

"Less than half an hour. I'll take a trial membership. Sites usually give one to three days for a small fee and I'll cancel it when we're done."

Ziva gives him a sly smile. "We would not want our Reverend Chaplain knowing you are illicitly trolling Dating sites."

"Won't be me, it'll be Robert Hastings."

"Her Eucharistic Minister," Tony emphasizes. "That is a complex web I would not want to be caught in."

"Well, hopefully I can catch Mary Waghoff in it," he bites. "As soon as I send a message to Juliette Spenser with an 's', Waghoff should notice. I'll be apologizing for missing our agreed appointment for beating and raping her."

"Now you truly do not want the lady to find out," Ziva warns him with a wicked smile.

He ignores her. "If she takes the bait, Corporal Spencer should start receiving 'hearts and flowers'."

"DiNozzo, David, be ready to move when McGee gets the trace. You two set up in Interrogation One, I want this recorded. When you're up and have her hooked, I'll be in I2 with Scalici. That bastard can watch his scheme collapse and Waghoff fall in the hole."

xxx

Thus it is that Tim and Juliette, facing one another across laptops, await the reply to McGee's apology. The wait will last an unknown time but once Waghoff notices the communication in her fraudulent email account rather than Spencer's, things will progress quickly.

The key is in that rapid progression. Once Waghoff is hooked, communication cannot be at the usual 'back from work, reply to email' pace. The initial date Spencer and Hastings had been lured into had taken two weeks for Scalici and Waghoff to set up. This time the Puppet Mistress must be kept too busy to anticipate a trap until DiNozzo and David kick down her door.

x

"I think you have an excellent chance," Dr. Maura Isles, called in for a psychological evaluation, tells Gibbs in the Observation chamber of I2. She'd left the present autopsy on Higgins' man to Samantha Sky - the young woman drives him up three walls at a time but she's a competent Apprentice ME - and come up to give him the benefit of her experience. He hopes Kate's blonde clone does have the experience he needs.

She'd been peripherally involved in this case for days, now he'll see if his trusting her was worth it.

In the darkened room they watch John Scalici, pulled from Holding, violently rant. The intercom is off so they need not tolerate the foul mouthed prisoner going berserk.

"Do you." He can't make it any more a non-question.

"Yes. Mary Waghoff, whatever her role in their relationship, must feel very powerful at this point. Scalici's been captured," she gestures to the young man in the soundproofed room, his sweating face growing steadily redder as he probably works out that no one's listening to his yelling, "while she has evaded capture by, perhaps in her view, the combined law enforcement authorities of the District."

It's true, Gibbs is forced to admit. Ignoring the hyperbole, by remaining off the grid Waghoff has managed to evade NCIS and the several BOLOs released in the past few weeks. While he has no doubt that she's continuing her activities, since they're unable to track her she's avoided the fate of her out-of-control partner trapped beyond the shatterproof glass.

With the sound cut, he can scream himself hoarse and only the unfortunate Agent assigned later to transcribe the session need hear it.

Gibbs considers buying the man or woman a drink this evening in recompense.

x

He hasn't been impressed by Scalici since the kid's - he can't consider the late teen a young man - capture. Surrounded on his lawn, he'd charged Michelle, thinking to batter the small woman out of his way. Palmer, formerly Lee, as the smallest and a woman, had likely expected to be chosen as his target and had given Scalici an education in why the people of her country are justly famous for their unarmed combat techniques.

It had taken three quarters of a second, but the young man had spent about a minute on his back relearning how to breathe.

Since then, Scalici has only distinguished himself by two characteristics, a monstrously inflated ego and a vocabulary that would embarrass the most hardened Longshoreman.

Gibbs wonders if it's worth sending for Palmer to come back from Virginia to shut him up again

x

"He really believes that?" Maura Isles asks. Gibbs hadn't been paying attention; days of interrogations have inured him to their subject's outbursts which he can't hear. He looks the question. "I can read his lips." Gibbs can as well but wonders why she'd want to. He doesn't. "I'd love to see how he would react to me, a mature woman rather than the girls he doesn't seem to have developed beyond."

"That's not gonna happen."

He'd have sent Kate in. He'd sent Ziva to rock him not long after the capture, but while Isles may be a wonder with a scalpel and have a mind like three sets of encyclopedias, unless she has a wellspring of skills Ducky hasn't hinted at or else has said scalpel in her scrubs' short sleeve, she's staying on this side of the glass.

"Do you believe she'll take McGee's bait?" he asks.

"Corporal Spencer's idea? Yes. While I didn't have a lot of time to review," she'd been introduced to the issue 20 minutes ago, "I focused on her Schooling and the report of her Guidance Counselor. Mary Waghoff is intelligent but, like Mr. Scalici there, is introverted, getting much of her social interaction via the worldwide web.

"Significant anger issues are noted, particularly expressed against her fellow female students. Much as she avoids social interaction it, or the lack of same, promotes deep anger and jealousy. She could participate in social activities but does not, then jealousy does over those who do. Her desire to have the women she victimizes beaten, raped and murdered is her way of obtaining vicarious revenge.

"She has a marked history of self destructive tendencies and I don't believe that has changed because I have found nothing to indicate any recent therapy. It's been noted several times that she displays characteristics one would find in people who are likely to hurt themselves. I would say she's also channeled these self abusive inclinations into maneuvering others into being hurt in her place.

"She does have a marked determination to prove herself better than her peers. It's for this reason I think she will try to do the job better than Scalici could. That sense of self aggrandizement will carry her over. The more successful she is in fooling Corporal Spencer and Agent McGee, the harder she will work."

Gibbs looks down to the blonde woman and considers that maybe he's been unfair to her and her talents. True, she's not Kate, but maybe she's good as Isles.

x

Maura, looking up, sees much in the silent man's face. "What's wrong?"

"She's playing the women's roles, the one who begs for death. But she tries to trick the guys into raping her first, then killing her."

"She definitely needs professional psychological help."

He's not sure he heard the answer right. Talk about understatement. "Ya think? Beating to death is what she wants, but she dangles rape as the carrot."

"I wish I had more material than scholastic records. Such behavior often accompanies self loathing, the desire for punishment. Her difference is that she manipulates others into being victim and perpetrator, thereby saving herself."

"So she can keep doing it."

x

Ever since the agents had gotten their first look at the pair on an Internet Cafe's security film, it's disturbed them that these two teens, who should be hanging out together playing Nantender or whatever it's called, could be responsible for so much perversion, so much brutal death.

Gibbs' phone rings. "Yeah, McGee."

/Waghoff has answered my apology. I just got an email that Spen_**s**_er forgives me but she wants to know if I have the b- the courage to do it. Meantime, Corporal Spencer received a very nice email that'd charm her if she hadn't thought it was so funny./

"Feed it to the screen in Interrogation 2."

/Will do. The video will show us, you'll be able to hear what we send, and I'll caption what the computers receive. I've started to trace her. Cyber Crime will back me up for anything Tony and Ziva need that I can't give them./

"Any idea where she is?" The agents are standing by in a service car in the lot.

/Vancouver, British Columbia by way of Arkansas, just off Rio de Janeiro./

He slaps the phone closed and gives a confirming nod to Isles. Inside the room their subject continues shouting at the glass. He turns the intercom on, leaves the volume at minimum and heads for the door. Once in the next room he'll slap the kid down and give him front row for the end.

He doesn't care how much Scalici yelled while they ignored his words, he's only interested in what the kid will say when he sees his scheme collapse.

xx

Tim closes his phone and looks to the uniformed woman seated in the perp chair. "Well, this is it. Show time."

"Guess so."

"You up for this?"

"My idea."

"Then let's start with a classic." He types "What do you want me to do to you?"

Juliette smiles. "I want you to– Oh, you mean _her_."

"I know what I want to do to her, and it starts out with handcuffs."

"Ooohh, kinky." She smiles into his glare, then catches activity on her laptop screen. "Wait, here it comes."

/I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. Your pictures are so beautiful. I can't wait for us to meet./

"I think I'll stick to the classics too. At least at first. Don't want to seem too clichéish." She considers for a moment and then types "Tell me about your dream date."

"Here's her answer to Haystings." /You promised to help me out of this f*cking life. I want to die and I want you to kill me./

"Sounds pretty testy. Don't let her slip the hook."

"I won't." He reads the output on the right side of his screen, having to manipulate both windows, picks up his phone, speed dials. "Tony, I've narrowed her down to the area around Dupont Circle."."

/Warping out./ A scream of overtaxed tires in his ear confirms the declaration and he closes the phone quickly. If the Circle is their destination, they had better hurry.

"Okay." He has to think about this, and it's harder than he'd thought. "How about /I'll beat you as we agreed, but remember, first I'm going to/ ummm..."

Spencer smiles. "Gentle lover, hmmm?"

"Newlywed, four months."

"Wow, are you ever out of your League." She comes around the table. "Shift aside, newlywed, and hope your wife never finds out you sent this." She backs out his draft, types quickly and hits Send.

x

"Wow."

"I'm a Marine," she says, returning to her own side of the table. "We understand violence."

"I should get you to write my part and I'll do yours."

She sits down before the laptop. "Forget that. When I get out of here I'm going to shampoo for an hour just for that one. You're on your own, newlywed." She checks her screen. "Here's my dream date."

/Dinner at Alfonzo's Steak House, then dancing at Flanagaan's, then I take you to my place for hot -/ "Wow, pretty forward."

"Well, it's her idea of a dream date."

"Not mine. Hearts and flowers; well, heart's beating a bit too fast and those flowers definitely have thorns. Time to cool 'him' down." Fingers to keyboard, she narrates and sends /Slow it down, stud. Girl likes a little romance on the first date./

"Back to me already."

"Well, you're the one who needs convincing. All I have to be talked into is dinner, dancing and then we negotiate the desert."

"/I want you to take me like that, rip off my panties, then use your teeth to tear apart my.../ Oh myyyy."

"Her 'oh my'?"

He looks up to her teasing grin, feeling very annoyed that she'd bait him. "No, her..."

"Let me guess: what you do with your wife 'down there' doesn't involve teeth."

"Certainly not." He locks his eyes on the screen. "This girl is a monster." He picks up his phone, very gratified to have an address in the other window. He passes it on, assured in turn that the capture is minutes away.

x

"And here's her answer to my slap down. /I'm sorry, I got ahead of myself. I keep dreaming of you in your shop./ She still thinks I'm this Florist. /I want to take you in the back behind the biggest plants and-/ Whoa, this kid needs a cold shower - or an orgy. Get it out of her system."

"Maybe you need to get it into her system. Keep her thinking of sex, at least until Tony and Ziva get there."

"You too. While she's got me in a jungle clinch, you need to start tearing apart her you-know-what with your teeth."

"I'll try." He knows he's to pretend enthusiasm, but he can't feel anything other than revulsion. He tries as hard as he can to block that mental image.

"She deserves it," Spencer insists, too aware that she's McGee's innocent and oblivious target. "Think of all the women she did it to."

He tries, sending a message he prays will be redacted in any Court evidence and that Gibbs will keep it far away from Tony – and Shav.

x

/I'd like you to take me back there,/ Juliette quotes as she types /and while we make out you take my blouse and bra off, use a rose to flavor my nipples, then.../ She looks up at him. "I think I'd better stop talking."

"Don't stop on my account," he says as she finishes the details and sends the message.

"It's on yours that I am. I have no problem with good smut, but you're married."

He tries not to let his annoyance show and knows he's failing as he sends Waghoff / Spenser a detailed reply that would have him in the Confessional at Saint Mary if Shav ever reads it.

x

"I'd like to meet her."

This brings him back up. "You're kidding, right?"

"Not her. Your wife. I'd like to meet the woman who inspires such gentility in a man. It's a pleasant change."

"I think she'll surprise you." But there's no time to explain that, even if he intended to do so. "Here's her next. /Tell me what you'd do when you get my breasts and my -/ well /all torn and bloody./"

He considers for a long moment, remembering what this girl has caused to be done to so many innocent women. Remembering also that he needs to keep up an ongoing commentary for the record and Gibbs' pressuring of Scalici, he reads/types "I'll get your nipple between my teeth, pull and bite while you scream until it-"

x

He yanks his hands from the keyboard as if it had burned them and leans back, annoyed the chair won't let him roll away. He can't do this. He wants to get away from the table, leap up and leave but he can't. This is a two phase operation and he can't ruin Gibbs' progress because he can't write this to a woman, no matter that she's literally asked for it.

Spencer sees he's stopped dead and knows why. She reaches out and grabs the top of his screen, pulls the laptop around and types from the point he'd left off.

"Maybe I should take your role after all," he says as she sends the missive.

She slides her laptop across to him. "Like I said, I understand violence. This kid doesn't know true lovemaking between a man and woman. She probably got all her ideas from YouTube S&M porn. Pretend you're back to dating your wife and she'll never catch on that you're a guy now."

"Thanks a lot." Then he realizes it came out far less graciously than he'd meant it. "I think she'd like you too."

"What's her name?" she asks over her typing.

"Shav." He breaks the mood. "Siobhan."

She looks over the laptop screens and her smile is more tender. "Which is it?"

"Siobhan to everyone else, Shav to me." He types a few moments. "Mother McGee to most people."

"Wait a sec. Is _she_ the 'Reverend Chaplain' Ziva was teasing you about?"

"Yep."

"I thought it odd that a Chaplain would care what course an Agent uses in an Investigation."

"She doesn't. Usually. Ziva was just being silly."

"As I recall, there's a lot of that goes on with your team."

"Hm. Can be."

x

She leans forward, her tone dropping. "So, what's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"Being married to a Priest? Oops!"

Whatever he'd say is lost in the incoming message she must read aloud for Agent Gibbs' operation in the other rooms. /I want you to f*ck me with a kitchen knife, then cut me from pu–/ "This kid needs _help_."

"She needs Ducky's help," he declares.

"I don't know him."

"Our M.E."

"Now be forgiving."

"That's what Shav would say."

"Told you we'd like each other." She returns to type quoting. /Don't want to cut that high. And I have plans for your tits before I cut them off./

x

"One coming in here." McGee announces. /I really like it gentle, having you lay me down and lick along my clit, lick deep insi–/ This kid's a regular Jekyll and Hyde."

"I'm losing track of which one I have," she says, backing out from an explicit description of her favorite sensation that 'he' would give 'her'. She's supposed to be Hastings now, negotiating her own sadistic death. "Tell her/him I like to have my throat nuzzled, the left side of my neck. Kiss me there for a long time while petting my nipples, I'll be so hot and wet I'll let you do everything you please."

"Good to know."

"Down, newlywed."

x

He pushes back from the table. "This is officially nuts. Me a man pretending to be a woman - you - writing a romantic sex scene with a girl who's a certified wacko who's pretending to be a man trying to seduce you."

"As bad as me pretending to be a guy being talked into raping and killing 'me' in a sadistic sex fantasy by that same certified wacko pretending to be me."

"'Oh what a tangled web we weave'..."

"when first we practice to net a bitch."

xx

Inside I2, Scalici is going berserk as he watches his sadistic empire collapse and Gibbs presses his advantage. "They'll net her too," he says, his Sergeant voice driving over the loud rant.

Scalici turns on him, backing away as he stabs the air between them with his shaking finger. "No way! NO F*CKING WAY! She'll see through this switch."

"Nope." He steps forward, forcing Scalici to retreat around the table. "They've got her focused on two kinds of sex at once. No one thinks clearly through one kind."

Scalici backs away from his inexorable advance, trembling violently, circling the table, Gibbs pacing him step for step. After several days of dealing with the loud, foul-mouthed, egotistical bastard, he's enjoying the meltdown. They're three quarters around, heading back toward the wall when he drives Scalici's failure deep. "She'll be playing when DiNozzo kicks down her door."

"STOP IT!" he screams, giving ground. He can't escape, the small room grows smaller as they circle back and the viewscreen is again beside the breaking man. "No Way! NO WAY! We do not do it until it's over!"

"It's over." He points to the screen. On it Juliette and Tim laugh over some received message and Scalici tears at his hair, leaving a wild mop.

"No! NotyetnotyetnotyetNOT YET! That's the whole point!"

"What point?"

"YOU IDIOT! This is _foreplay_! We do it when the job's _done_ and the bitch is _dead_!"

x

Though he works not to show it Gibbs is rocked. No, he's absolutely appalled. For days they've endured Scalici's rants while they searched for a motive for this madness, but they hadn't found a rational - or even an irrational - one.

Now it's clear.

All this, the plotting, the manipulation, the sadistic abuse and horrific rape murders - all this so two monsters could have sex. That's why the buildup of so many victims.

He understands now why they hadn't seen it. Sane minds, though forcibly exposed for years to the horrors of depravity, still recoil and stay blind to this level of madness.

x

McGee's cell phone sounds. "Yes, Tony."

/ We're about to hit. Bring on that crescendo./

"With pleasure."

Both start a flurry of typing, hitting their target with the most outrageous messages.

xx

Tony and Ziva, address and apartment obtained and confirmed by the Cyber Crime Unit as that belonging to the Thile family, confirmed by cell phone records investigated by that same Unit as having frequent links with Waghoff's cell, stand in the hall, Sigs drawn. "Ready?" he asks.

"I have had to deal twice with Scalici, once in pink stretch top so tight I could not wear a bra and slacks that were spray painted onto my body while he stared as my breasts. I have been ready for days."

"Then I'll hit her high, you hit her low." He sets himself and his power kick next to the lock blasts the door inward. "FEDERAL AGENTS!" echoes through the living room.

There is only one person here and Tony freezes, feeling his eyes bulge even as his mouth falls open.

Mary Waghoff, perspiring heavily, her disheveled clothes half thrown off, sits well back upon a couch, a laptop computer on a tray table before her. Her legs are splayed, drawn up and her wet right hand works furiously.

She looks at them and he's sure the usual surprise a captured perp feels cannot squeeze into the gasping girl's overworked psyche.

"Oh God! _Guns_!" she pants, her flushed face drenched. "Oh, shoot my cat!" she begs Tony, who can only stare, flabbergasted. "Please shoot my cat!"

x

Tony feels his feet work of their own accord, independent of his short-circuited mind, and the apartment recedes before his locked wide eyes until he's back in the hall.

Ziva remains and Tony's sure, when he can force his brain to function other than in 'desperate delete' mode, that Waghoff's about to learn a whole new and likely painful interpretation of 'interruptus'.


	5. Only Fun I Ever Get

Chapter Five  
>Only Fun I Ever Get<p>

Tony DiNozzo, standing on the steps of the four story building, berates himself. He's never walked out on an bust in his career but he still hasn't had enough time to get his mind cleared from what Mary Waghoff, holed up in a friend's apartment, had been doing and the condition in which he and Ziva had found her. He'd had to back off and leave her to Ziva. Some things are not meant to be seen but must be forgotten quickly. It took him half a minute to report to Gibbs, then he'd spent the remaining few minutes trying to unsee the sight, to unhear her plea.

After years of literally uncounted romantic and fiery relationships, even with the formidable Mossad Officer, he has finally reached his limit. What he'd backed away from, leaving his partner to deal with, is beyond his limit.

He hadn't believed he had a limit. Now he's come face to brick wall with it.

He has to force himself, after too few minutes, to turn about and reclimb the inner stairs. He reaches the broken door and finds Ziva standing before the couch on which slumps the now dressed and handcuffed Waghoff.

x

"You didn't shoot her cat, did you?" he quips to disguise his still unbalanced emotions. There's no blood on couch or clothes.

"No, Tony, I did not," she snaps and he knows he will pay for his desertion, privately and painfully. "And do not ask me if I was tempted."

"What's wrong with her?" Unresponsive is a major understatement.

"I think getting caught was not in her life view. Aside from that, she may have a dislocated shoulder."

"Was she working it that hard?" When they'd arrived, Waghoff was deep in the throes of the effects of her scheme.

"No. She made the mistake of resisting arrest."

He knows Ziva's not in the mood for evasion or debate. He hadn't been either, though he'd been too stunned - and truth be told too embarrassed - to make the arrest.

"If you will begin the search, I shall transport our prisoner and bring back the truck."

"Gladly." The sooner the girl is gone, the better he'll like it. His brief encounter with Andrea Harper and Janet Vasser had been unsettling enough, but Mary Waghoff could convince him to swear off dating. 'I really need to call Jeanne and ask her to screw my head back on.'

He'll gladly stay to gather evidence of Waghoff's crimes from the laptop and elsewhere.

And eventually someone from the Thile family will arrive and they will want answers about such things as the broken door, the arrest of their guest and the subsequent search of the apartment and seizure of an as yet undetermined volume of evidence.

This encounter is definitely preferable to one minute more with Waghoff. He has many questions as well for the Thile family and he has the feeling this is going to be one of this year's more interesting exchanges.

xxx

In a fourth floor office down the corridor from the Director's suite are three desks, one near to the right and facing the door, the other two to its right facing inward from the left and right corners. The left corner desk, which had been Kevin Lamb's when Bob DiMarco led this team, is and remains vacant. Lisa DuBois works at her computer at the right desk. Against the rear wall where it won't block the women's views is a set of filing cabinets, but DuBois wishes now that her view were blocked so she cannot see her friend's desk or feel the guilt at her failure. Every time her gaze rises above the level of her monitor screen toward that vacant desk, the sharp blade again pierces her heart.

Gibbs and Lamb enter past Lamb's desk, responding to her call from ten minutes ago. "What've you got, Lisa?" Kevin asks.

"Just finished double checking. There are two Kurlands in the Corps on the East Coast, both PFCs so that's no help; Frank in Pensacola and Harold in the Navy Research Laboratory south of here." Pensacola, Florida is reachable in a few hours, but DC's NRL can be reached in a fraction of the time.

"Abby will have information in a few hours," Gibbs says. "Meantime we'll focus on the Lab."

"We didn't get the name of the bar Jan went to before we went to her building, but the agents on her Protection Detail did, the Golden Sphinx."

"Golden Sphinx?" Gibbs repeats.

"Pretentious idiots."

"Print up the images on Kurland and Kurland," Lamb orders, "and let's get going."

Lisa holds up two papers.

"And you're still sitting?"

xxx

"Welcome back, Abby."

Abby knows that lilting Irish brogue coming from the rear door to her left belongs to one of her dear, if fairly new, friends and glances back over her shoulder, unable to break much concentration from the microscope before her. "Hi, Siobhan. Thanks." The greeting, automatic as it is, is out even as she's turning back to the device, but the briefly seen image then impresses itself upon her mind and she whirls back, her whole body into it now. "_Whoa_! Now _that_ is a new look!"

"Like it?" the fiery-tressed woman asks, wholly unnecessarily Abby thinks, and pirouettes on black high heeled slippers to display the full effect.

"Again - Whoa!"

x

The Priest's usual 'look', certainly the only way she's seen the woman when she's working as Priest at Saint Mary the Virgin or as NCIS' Chaplain, is more uniform than any Marine's, as they can mix-and-match basic designs to up to sixteen distinct - if only to another Marine - versions. The most she's seen of Mother McGee's working uniform were three versions, one of those borrowed from Father Donaldson when her apartment had been bombed, and that man's extra shirts had been ill-fitting attire indeed.

The Cleric's preferred Working Uniform is a powder blue short sleeved back-button blouse with wraparound white collar and medium length black skirt in warm weather, or long sleeves and pants after September.

The black dress she wears now is sleeveless, mid thigh length and very flattering. What makes the 'little black dress' unique is the white square tab collar at her throat. Abby knows Rev. George Donaldson, Rector of Saint Mary the Virgin, prefers the traditional black and tab style, which she's always suspected is why Siobhan favors powder blue with wraparound. She wonders what the boss thinks about his Curate's new style.

"I _like_. No one will ever mistake you for Father Donaldson in that outfit."

"Timmy got it for me. He found it on the Internet." She steps closer. "I didn't even know they existed," she says, her brogue softening as she speaks in confidence, "but I suppose I should have seen it coming. He's always buying me these 'feminine' things."

"Really?"

"Usually from Victoria's Secret, things I'd die if anyone saw, so I guess it was inevitable."

"_Really_." She wonders just how far Tim has gone. Reading the priest's emerald eyes, maybe too far, which had only spiced her own tone. Siobhan blushes as only a redhead can.

"But now you're the only one who knows about Timmy's illicit catalogue surfing."

"Your secret's safe with me." She looks the dress over. "Chic but functional."

"True," she admits.

"And you love it."

"Dern right."

x

They're both 5 and 10 but the Priest's black high heels now bring her up again to Abby's black and red boots height. Maybe she still has a sixteenth of an inch on the redhead but this only helps Abby to look into her guest's emerald eyes.

And there's a haunted expression in them that Siobhan can't hide and Abby doesn't have to guess about.

Today's Wednesday. She had had her regular hours at her fourth floor office yesterday and, glad as Abby is for the company after not seeing her for weeks, she's never known NCIS' busy Chaplain, who with her demanding Curate's duties at Saint Mary the Virgin can regularly devote but one day a week here - yesterday - to be a casual visitor.

And by no stretch of the imagination is anything about today casual.

x

"So, how's Janet?"

Siobhan shakes her head and her tone goes from 10 to -1. "Bad. I got in to see her briefly after her parents left. She can't talk well at all, her jaw is clamped, but all you'd see are her eyes, lips, arms and hand, but he'd stomped on her right uand and her fingers are set in a metal brace. She has so many fractures she won't be on her feet for two months."

Abby remembers that in January the priest's condition, even to hand from the same cause, was little different. "She talked to you?" Slightly surprised, knowing the agent and the priest, she puts more into her question than the words.

Siobhan lightly grasps the stiff white tab at her throat between thumb and forefinger, slides it to the side until one rounded end is visible, then slips that back in. "Without this, it's just the proverbial 'little black dress'."

Janet Levy had been raised Hasidim but doesn't follow many of the traditions, much to her parents' distress. This had led, on one occasion, to her being (briefly) Outcast from her family and the entire Religious Community; the Cherem, a consequence of a nightmare that still plagues the women of NCIS.

Actually, as a Virginia State Police Officer and now a Federal Agent, strict observance can be complicated, sometimes impossible, so one lifestyle had had to go. It had been a very difficult choice, with extensive and long-running consequences - including said Cherem or ostracism.

But friends though the two women are and having worked together professionally many times, Janet is still far more comfortable talking to Siobhan than she is in speaking to Mother McGee.

"Still," Abby says, finding yet another aspect of similarity between her friends, "if anyone can get though to her, you can."

"Thank you, but you may be giving me more credit than I deserve."

"I don't know. After Charlie Morley–"

"I don't want to talk about that!"

x

"Hey, I'm with you," Abby assures her, sorry for the thoughtless faux pas. She'd forgotten in her concern for Janet.

She senses, always has, that Siobhan has never revealed the full details of what she'd suffered in the first days of the year. Kidnapped, tortured by a sadistic madman, multiple rapes and devastating beatings weren't the worst the priest had suffered, the nightmare having started only minutes after Tim had proposed to her, then had left her safe at the Rectory door.

Yes, Siobhan can relate to Janet's suffering, and she feels like an idiot for bringing it up.

x

"How is she?" Abby asks, wishing for the hundredth time she could be at Monroe U with her friend, but she must be here finding out where to find the... the... who did this to her.

"How much have you heard?" Siobhan asks.

"More than too much. I've been analyzing the evidence and, while waiting for some results, I looked around in the hospital's medical records on her, something I can safely admit to a priest."

"Your secret's as safe as in the Confessional. In fact, how she is is why I'm here."

"How's that?"

"I'm here undercover, tasked with finding out how the Investigation is going."

Abby turns away, back to her microscope, bends to look at the slide. "Sorry. Can't help you."

x

"I'm sorry?"

She stares into the device. "You know perfectly well that badge of yours says 'Chaplain', not 'Special Agent'. Kevin Lamb is her SSA, Gibbs is Deputy SAIC and the Director is the Director. They're the ones who get reports on a case." She looks back over her shoulder. "Can you imagine what Gibbs would say if I blab information on a case to someone who isn't an Agent? You can probably learn more from your husband than from me. I can't tell you anything."

"I'm sorry I asked."

She turns back to the scope, affixing her eye to the lens. "I can't tell you that they found Kurland's fatigue shirt with her blood all over it. I can't tell you that there're BOLOs all over the East Coast. I can't tell you that I'm running tests on hairs that Jan pulled loose from our guy or about the hairs I found on the shirt. In fact, I can't tell you about the dozen other bits of trace evidence I lifted from that shirt that Major Mass Spec's having a seven course meal over. I can't even tell you about the DNA tests on the sperm from the Rape Test kit that're still running for the next fifteen hours. I especially can't tell you that Gibbs' team is tied with Lamb's, or that the Director has assigned Melanie Kelman's and Rosa Arnell's teams on the Beta and Gamma shifts so this has 24 hour coverage." She turns back, folds her arms firmly over her chest and gives a sharp nod. "So there!"

"Abby, I'm sorry I tried to get you to break a confidence," she says, having trouble keeping a serious expression.

"Well, don't let it happen again," she commands. "Now beat it before I have your husband take you over his knees."

This does break her poker face, and so she walks away saying "My name's not Sky."

"_Tim_ spanks _Sammy_?"

Siobhan turns back. "Abby, you are so bad."

"Only fun I ever get."

x

The door toward the elevator slides open to its rapid tones. "_Siobhan_!"

The woman turns back, probably quite surprised by the urgent call. She hadn't intended to be heard in the Cafe. "Yes?" She steps back in before the motion sensor can slide the door back onto her.

Abby goes into her office, opens a drawer and pulls out a white remote control, points it across the large room at the door behind the priest and presses the red button, satisfied by the click. Siobhan's eyes ask the question.

"I _really_ have to talk to Mother McGee."

Siobhan crosses the outer lab into the office. That door closes and Abby locks it too.

"What may I do for you?"

Abby notes the professional difference in the woman's manner, more formal now than seconds ago. She slowly and solemnly Blesses herself, careful to make the lines straight, realizing a moment later that she too has slipped, unconsciously, into a more formal aspect. She uses the remote control a last time, turning off all the lights in office and both labs, leaving only the pinpoints and readings of various machines to hold back total blackness, though they provide less light than do the stars. Now, if someone leaves the elevator and reaches the first locked door, neither woman can be seen.

In the darkness she kneels down, eyes cast down toward the invisible floor.

"Forgive me, Mother, for I am about to sin..."

xxx

It's closing on 'End of Shift' for the Alpha teams and Gibbs has called SSA Kevin Lamb to meet him in the Conference Room where the two Team Leaders will brief their counterpart Melanie Kelman and her team on Levy's attack and where they will pick up the Investigation and carry it through until they hand it off to Rosa Arnell, Mark Brennan, Bill Parcells and Kari Ling at midnight.

Lamb is quiet but Gibbs doesn't have to ask why. The frustration on the man's face is so familiar. "Golden Sphinx was a mute?"

"Golden Sphinx was not open. Idiots open after eight, but we're going back."

Gibbs sits down opposite the younger man, but he says nothing about marshaling resources, even though they're here to turn the investigation over to the second string. If Ziva or Michelle had suffered what Janet has he'd be on twenty four hours a day, driving his team as hard until they broke the case. For now he has something else to discuss with the man. "You gave Abby a hell of a scare today."

Kevin sighs. "I realize that, and I'm sorry."

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to."

"And I will, right after this. I was working so hard to keep Lisa in her right mind over this I didn't realize I'd gotten out of mine."

"You back in it?"

"Yeah."

He's not confident, but he'll give his counterpart the benefit of as much doubt as he can. "Good. Then I don't have to mention that we can't have an agent thinking the kind of thoughts you were."

"No, you don't. Are you going to mention it to Shepherd?"

"You telling me I should?"

"No."

"Good."

The Conference Room door opens and SSA Melanie Kelman leads SAs Kenneth Templeton and Patrick Larsen in.

xxx

Tony DiNozzo is in no enviable mood as he knocks on the door of Jeanne Benoit's apartment, then again, and then again, but "Hi, Tony" comes from behind him instead of through the wood. He turns quickly, finding the woman smiling at him. She wears a pink tinted blouse, a complimentary skirt and a too happy expression.

"Hi," he gets out too many seconds late.

"Uh oh, I know that look," she says, stepping forward and hugging him. He knows, for this is not uncommon between them, that she will not say another word until he does. But over a minute goes by and he doesn't want to do more than hold her.

She leans back far enough so she can see his face, but not so far that she might seem to be pulling away. "Last time you looked like this they'd just buried 9 of your agents."

"Might as well be. How will Janet do?" He feels like she's searching his eyes, but he won't flinch.

"Do you want a Doctor's answer, or a woman's?"

"Doctor's. I don't think I could handle a woman's. Today women scare me."

Now she's probing him, but he won't tell her about Mary Waghoff _or_ Lisa DuBois.

Her expression says she's working through that 'women scare me' line, but then she sets it aside. "Whoever beat her nearly killed her. Any worse and she'd be dead before we got her.

"Can you help her?"

"We are. She'll live, and she'll recover - physically at least - but don't expect to see her at work until the Fall. Your agents are guarding her, but who did it? I spoke to them. They're prepped for the guy to come back and they're looking forward to his trying."

xxx

"Jan?" The feminine voice, mostly familiar, comes from a million miles away, but each time the call is repeated it's a little closer until it's so near that Janet Levy can't keep her eyes closed any longer. When she opens them, the room is dim and her partners tower over her. She can't see any light streaming in from the window to her left.

"What time is it?" She's the first one to realize she can whisper a little more clearly. It still hurts, she can't move her jaw, but she can form the words a little bit better. She has to be so careful breathing, her fractured ribs stab her with every wrong breath and her fractured skull, broken collar bone and two broken fingers make her sure she'll never get another moment's joy from life.

"Twenty one thirty three," Kevin Lamb tells her.

"Come on," she whispers, "I'm off duty."

"No, you're on overtime."

"Slave driving bastard." But there's more of love than rebuke in her whisper.

"We were hoping," Lisa DuBois says, "that you have more now that the drugs are out of your system."

"Who says they are? I'm floating between Mars and Neptune."

"Covers a lot of space," she says, unfazed.

"What've you got? Did you get him?"

"We need more. You were out of it before, we had nothing from you."

Kevin brings a chair close to the bed, on her right, signals for Lisa to sit down, but when Janet tries to turn her head and moans she stands back up.

"Tell us everything you can," he tells her.

x

"It was the Golden Sphinx. I went there–"

She bites back what she would have said, and it bites Lisa. 'Alone, thank you,' is what the woman thinks was bitten.

"Alone, I know. Jan, I am so sorry."

"Not your fault. No fault."

"Tell us what happened," Kevin says, his tone a little firmer than before. Personal things between them can wait, what they need now is to know.

Between extra care in breathing shallowly and whispering, it takes much time to relate the story.

"I went for a flirtfest, but no one was worth it. I left. I was very careful. No one followed me, to my car or home. When I got home I parked. There was one other occupied car, a few cars ahead, right opposite my door. A man got out, he was wearing Marine Fatigues. My first thought, when he headed for my building, was that I wasted the evening.

"I followed him, made it into the lobby behind him. We waited for the elevator. I was playing coy. It was late, too late to start anything but I wanted to see where he lived, make some plans. Check him out. He pressed _my_ floor. I thought I was going to Heaven, but I played it coy. Didn't want him to think I was stalking him just because I was stalking him.

"I looked up in time to see his fist an inch from my eye. My head hit the wall and he hit me again. He played fistball with my skull for - I don't know how many punches. I woke up on the stairwell, I tried to fi- to fi–! I couldn't! He kept hitting me and hitting me... then I woke up with Doctors over me…."

"You got a fistful of his hair," Lisa tells her. "I don't know exactly how much, but Abby's happy with it."

"Then so am I," she whispers.

x

"Jan." Lisa holds two papers above Janet's face, the ones she'd printed earlier of the only two East Coast Kurlands. "Do either of these men look familiar?"

Janet stares at them for a long time, first together, then one at a time. "Not sure. Not sure. I'm... not sure."

She's still fighting the drugs, both agents know, but they also know the memories won't come clearly enough until their effects fade.

The control she'd kept up to this point deserts her. "Lise? Lise, tell me. _Please_." She struggles to keep control, loses more by the second. "Tell me the truth."

"Anything."

"They say he... Did he...?"

Kevin looks to Lisa, sees her fight the words out.

"Yeah, honey," she says softly. "He did."

Janet's sobs are silent, only her shaking body and the tears flowing down both sides of her face through the eye space until they're absorbed in the gauze give her away.

Lisa bends close, hugging the woman as carefully as she can, avoiding touching her encased ribs or collar bone, but Janet's crying is still silent. Kevin steps around his partner, quietly crosses the room and closes the door behind him, leaving the two women to each other.


	6. He Hurt Yours

Chapter Six  
>He hurt yours.<p>

Abby Sciuto doesn't look back when the rapid beeping of her main door announces the arrival of her favorite slave driver, all set to crack the 0800 whip. "You're too early, Gibbs," she calls.

"Then good thing I'm not Gibbs," a man's mellow voice responds as footfalls approach. These are enough, even if the man hadn't spoken. No one can hear Gibbs, the man levitates an eighth of an inch off the floor when he 'walks'. She turns to find tall, thin Kevin Lamb a few feet away.

She'd last seen him last evening before she'd gone home, having made an unusually early day of her first day back. He'd apologized, reassured and promised her that he's not an unreasonable danger to whoever it is that hurt his partner, not that whoever the bastard is doesn't deserve it.

She hasn't told him of her canceled intent to withhold evidence from him, which she'd confessed in advance to Mother McGee. She preferred to keep their making up uncomplicated, and if all the apologies had to come from him, then so much the better.

"Hi, Kev. How's Jan?"

"I called the hospital. There's no bad news, if that's what you're asking, but Lisa and I wish we could be there with her _and_ here working to track down the... who did that to her."

"You can say it."

"What would be the point? I've - we both've exhausted Roget's yesterday. We saw her last night, found out some things that made no sense."

"Wait." He'd smiled when he'd said that. "That makes you _happy?"_

"Senseless things can be good in an Investigation, provided they make the right kind of lack-of-sense."

"I'll be waiting for an explanation of that."

"You'll get it."

x

"How is she?"

"Better now that we're making progress, such as it is. We have a brainstorming session with Arnell's team in a few minutes."

"Then I won't keep you."

"I wanted to find out first what you have."

She holds out her bare hands. "I've got nothing."

"_Abby_."

"You saw me before I went home, I've been in for half an hour. Oh, I have DNA off the shirt from skin cells; it's her blood on it, perfect match. I have short brown hairs from the collar that are consistent, so far, with the ones I think Janet pulled off him. I have sperm – don't tell DiNozzo, he still thinks I'm a girl."

Surprise breaks into a laugh. "Thanks. I needed that."

"But seriously, what I told you when you were Gibbs is the truth. I'm analyzing what I have and I'll tell you when I have answers. I have ten tests running simultaneously, I keep jumping between them."

"Is it too late to get Ruby Rae back?"

"Much. The Armed Forces DNA Registry is a bitch, it's _still_ used only for ID'ing remains."

"So to get something on our perp with a clean Record or he wouldn't be a Marine performing Honorable Service to his Country, he'd have to be a convicted Felon."

"Sucks, I know, but we've been through this over and over. And over. But since there's no proof that whoever did this _is_ a Marine, CODIS may well come through for us."

"Hope so. For now we're working the theory that he _is_ a Marine, one of the two in the Corps Database."

"How are you and Lisa handling the load?"

"Well. Ziva David has been switched over to work with us, so it's two teams of three when we're out in the field. Call me as soon as you have something."

"Will do." She steps forward, puts her arms about him in a brief hug. "Pass that on to Lisa."

"Sure. And thank you."

"Any time."

x

He gets one step, stops, checks his watch. "Abby?"

"Yes?"

He turns back to her. "If I tell you something, something in confidence, I don't want you to think of me as a male chauvinist pig."

Bert is on the corner of the table, he'd been her comfort a little while ago, and she picks him up. "Not a pig. Maybe a male chauvinist hippo." She squeezes the toy to her abdomen and it makes an appropriately rude sound.

She can see, however, that his smile is very, very forced.

"I went off the beam yesterday, and I'm sorry, but... Do you know how it is to have two women under you?"

"Ah, _no._ But perhaps Sammy could tell you."

"Damn, this is going as badly as I thought it would."

"Then just tell me."

"When Bob DiMarco was in charge I still felt I had two women I had to look out for. If either of them knew I thought I had to take care of them or protect them–"

"They'd play soccer with your balls."

"Damn right. But I can't help thinking like that. Like I let Janet down, like I–"

"Kev, I'm not Mother McGee so I'm going to do my best; just follow me, okay?"

"Okay."

"When Tony was poisoned it tore Gibbs apart, not so anybody but me could see it. Ditto a couple of years back when he was infected with the Y Pestis plague. When Tim was hospitalized after that accident and we thought the Elf Lord was going to take over, Gibbs didn't sleep during that whole time. When he found out Michelle was gang raped he'd have killed those bastards for it except he'd already killed them." She sees his surprise, remembers too late. "Keep that one under your hat; Michelle still doesn't want Jimmy to know.

"The point is: you're the Team Leader and it doesn't matter that you lead two women or two men or some combo. They're yours to protect, whether they can protect themselves better than you can or not. As long as you're Team Leader, as long as you ever have someone under you who you're responsible for, that isn't ever going to change and it's not going to get easier. Someone hurts yours, you're going to feel exactly what you feel now. We all know you want to give this bastard a third eye. He hurt yours, one of the ones you're responsible for, and you're going to even the score - legally but even.

"And I'll tell you something they never swore me to secrecy over: Both Jan and Lise know you have their backs and that you truly care, and they love you for it."

xxx

When Lamb reaches the 3rd floor Operations Division Gibbs' bullpen is crowded with nine men and women, the extras being Special Agent Rosa Arnell and her team, Mark Brennan, Bill Parcells and Kari Ling, there to pass the 0800 torch to Alpha Shift. On the large plasma screen between DiNozzo's and McGee's desks is a formal portrait photo of a Dress Uniformed Marine seated before an unfurled flag. Lisa DuBois sharply waves him over.

"They're sure?" Gibbs is asking Arnell's team generally.

It's the brown haired woman who speaks for her team. "That's the consensus of those we spoke to at the Golden Sphinx. He didn't look as good, but it _resembles_ Kurland so far as those who weren't paying attention can say. Those few who did notice, such as the bar maid who never got a tip so she remembers, say he left about a half hour before Levy did."

The image is of PFC Harold Kurland who, according to the text beside the flattering photograph, is assigned to the Navy Research Laboratory here in DC.

"His record is good," Arnell says, consulting her notes.

"Look familiar?" Gibbs asks Lamb and DuBois.

"No," Lamb says. He hadn't recognized either of the Kurlands Lisa had dug up pictures of yesterday. Now that the focus is narrowed to a laser's targeting it's no better. "We've never investigated this guy for anything, he was never a witness or even on the fringes of a case." He turns to Arnell. "Witnesses aren't sure it's him?"

"All I'll say is that someone very closely resembling him was at the Golden Sphinx last night, left about a half hour before Special Agent Levy. No more."

"I'll take this picture down to Jan," Lisa says, pressing her chestnut hair back behind her ears.

"You and Ziva," he corrects her. He has Point on this combined team and assigns resources accordingly. It hadn't worked yesterday, she'd been too medicated. Maybe today will work better. "Did you tell them?"

"We didn't get to it."

Lamb takes in the nine agents surrounding him. "Janet was _targeted._ No matter whether NCIS knows or cares about him, this bastard hunted her. Now we know he left the bar a half hour before she did, but we already knew he was parked outside her building before she arrived, went into her building first, pressed her floor on the elevator."

"Sounds pretty focused to me," DiNozzo says.

"That's what I thought until we found his shirt. That, to me, is a huge problem." Their expressions ask the question. "Her blood was all over it. Abby confirms it's hers, that she pulled hairs off the collar that're consistent with the ones from the scene, but he didn't take it to his car, parked right across the street from her building and dispose of it in the Anacostia on his way back. Lisa found it in the top of a trash can _two hundred feet east of her door_.

x

"Is he stupid?" DiNozzo asks what's flashing through everyone's minds.

Gibbs shakes his head, half in wonder, half aggravation. "A Marine targeting an NCIS Agent? Ya think?"

"I'm wondering why he didn't wrap it around a rock and chuck it into the Anacostia," Tony presses. If he didn't want any blood in his car, there are far more efficient ways of preventing it than dumping a shirt with his name on it.

"Perhaps," Ziva says, "he thought he had better chance of disposing of the evidence in the local dump."

"Doesn't work for anyone else," Lisa declares.

"What does he do?" Gibbs asks DiNozzo.

"Specialist in the Submarine Systems and Subsystems Section."

"Is that not carrying alliteration too far?" Ziva asks.

"I don't care where they carry it," Lamb declares, "just so we pick him up and put him on the grill.

"Meantime, McGee, the image of that Olympic shoe."

"Very good, boss. Almost perfect in fact." The pictures showed virtually no wear pattern. However, where Class characteristics are distinctive enough that Abby will be able to match the treads to a particular style of shoe, there aren't any distinctive Individual characteristics that will say to a jury 'these are Harold Kurland's shoes and he was wearing them when he attacked Janet Levy'.

"If he's not wearing them when we pull him in," Lamb declares, "I want a Search Warrant for his home and everywhere else up to and including his gym locker. I want to lace those things around his neck."

"Okay," Gibbs says to Lamb, "you, DiNozzo and I will bring him in, but we wait on Abby's DNA tests before we bear down." He wants to be certain they have the right man, both from Levy's identification and Abby's confirmation. Second-handing uniforms is illegal, which is probably why so many people do it.

"Ziver, you and DuBois find the connection between Kurland and Levy. Why target her?"

xxx

Lisa DuBois and Ziva David enter the quiet room at Monroe University Hospital and each woman forces a pleasant mask that they're sure isn't going to fool their fellow Agent. The plaster and the gauze that wrap Janet Levy's head and face over and over again, leaving only mouth and eyes visible, is a far more efficient mask than any poker smiles they can force.

The casts protecting Janet's cheekbone, the back of her head and much of her face so distort the once lovely woman that Lisa still hasn't recognized her.

ZNN is on the wall mounted plasma screen, but if Janet is attempting to garner information there she's being disappointed. NCIS has clamped down on all news from the moment Metro called them in and handed off the baton. The fact that a Federal Agent has been assaulted in the stairwell of her home has been locked until her assailant has been brought down. So far as that man knows, unless he was watching the site when Metro arrived in the morning and is a true idiot, no one has found Janet alive.

Now they're going to find him.

x

"Hi, Jan," Lisa says, too late realizing that the mask she's affected hasn't been brought down to her voice. "How are you?"

"This blasted stuff itches," she whispers, moving her lips carefully and not trying to raise her head. Her relocated, fractured jaw is kept immobile, so it's only with particular effort that she can produce the words clearly enough to be understood.

"They say that itching means its healing."

"I can do with a lot less healing."

Lisa won't say how untrue that is. She's seen the pictures from before the doctors had begun their work and hopes Jan hasn't.

Her friend had been lovely but the beating had left her bruised, bloody, swollen and distorted. Her skull is fractured in four places, jaw and collar bone broken, six fractured ribs, the entire front of her body, from shoulders to hips, is a mass of bruises worse than the cratered moon. The beating she'd received was thorough, and when Lisa had seen those pictures she'd wondered how her friend had survived.

"How are you really doing?"

"Rabbi Bergman was here a while ago, Chaplain McGee's been here twice," she whispers, carefully enunciating the words. "At this rate, I think they're getting me ready for Heaven."

"_You'll_ be lucky to get less than 5,000 years in Purgatory."

Janet laughs but it quickly changes to a long groan. "Please... Donnn't."

Lisa enjoys their continual debates on the merits of their respective expressions of Faith; Hasidic vs Roman, as much as Janet does, and she's determined that Jan know she's not getting out of them easily.

"Careful," Janet whispers, eyes to Ziva. "It's two against one. We'll mop the floor with you."

"I'll bring Reverend McGee back and we'll have a real knock-down, drag-out."

The laugh turns into a more deeply pained groan. "Sadistic bitch," she sighs when she can.

"I've a better idea." Lisa raises and opens an NCIS file holder, holds the two color photos above Janet's face so she need not pick up her head. "This guy look familiar?"

Last night neither had, but last night Jan had been medicated, fighting sleep.

x

Lisa hardly needs a word of answer, the gasp and the expression in her friend's brown eyes within the gauze are eloquent enough. "That's him!" comes in a sharp whispered exclamation. "On the right."

Lisa rechecks them. She's identified Harold Kurland from here in DC, not Frank from Florida. "No doubt?"

Anger and hatred force the words at almost normal volume. "I'll see that son-of-a-bitch in every nightmare I have for the rest of my _life_. Who is he?"

"PFC Harold Kurland, Naval Research Laboratory."

Ziva already has her phone to her ear, only has to listen to two rings. "Gibbs, Special Agent Levy has positively identified PFC Harold Kurland from the NRL."

She pulls the phone away quickly as all three women hear the screech of tortured rubber.

xxx

Gibbs' yellow and black Hemi, with Kevin Lamb riding shotgun and Tony in the rear clutching any secured object he can reach, bounces over the speed bump near the main entrance to the Research Laboratory on Overlook Avenue SW.

"One of these days we're going to have a real 'Dukes of Hazzard' moment," Tony says.

"The General Lee was orange," Lamb counters, changing grip in preparation for the stop-on-a-dime Gibbs is equally renowned for.

"It'll depend upon what I have for lunch that day."

"You do it," Gibbs says, "you clean it."

"Yes, boss."

xx

NAVSEA is where development and testing of weapons is conducted and is the largest of the Navy's five systems commands. Its Warfare Center Enterprise is comprised of the Naval Surface Warfare Center and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Kurland is assigned to the latter.

It's not a base as the layman thinks of one, nor is it a fenced in community. The main building, in from Clara Barton Parkway between Kitty Hawk and Caarderock, looks remarkably civilian in design and to the unpracticed eye resembles a College Campus.

The base is devoted to Scientific and Military Research - and Gibbs hopes there's nothing like the PDC/9 or the Millennium on its drawing boards. Kurland's duties are geared to 'advanced technology' of Submarines, of the kind only McGee probably understands.

In short order the three Agents are in the inner office of Captain William Morris, and Kevin Lamb is a half step forward of his counterparts. "We're looking for PFC Harold Kurland," he tells the blue uniformed officer.

"I won't ask if anything is wrong," that worthy tells him. "In my experience trouble depends on the number of NCIS Agents I see at any one time. The standard is two, so I figure this must be really unpleasant."

"It can be, Captain. Is he here?"

Morris reaches for his intercom. "Would you step in, Corporal? And bring your Duty Roster."

A few moments later the door opens and the dark haired woman wearing summer uniform, from whom they'd obtained Clearance moments ago, steps in.

"Corporal Danvers, where is PFC Harold Kurland?"

She consults a thick stack of papers bound by a set of rings at the top, flipping several at a time out of her way until she comes to the required page. After a moment's consideration she looks up and past the civilians.

"I'm sorry, Captain, PFC Kurland is on a fourteen day Leave."

"Since _when_?" Lamb demands a moment before her commander can speak. She doesn't answer the agent, and when he looks back to the man behind the desk he sees how severe the faux pas was. "I'm sorry, Captain, but it's urgent we locate him as soon as possible."

A few long moments, then Morris nods permission to Danvers.

"Private Kurland signed out for Leave the day before yesterday at 2000 hours." It was around 0130 yesterday, five and a half hours later, that he'd beaten Janet Levy. "He left a Destination Report for California. There's a notation that he'd depart out of Reagan at 0500 yesterday."

They turn back to Morris, who spreads his hands. "Sorry, gentlemen."


	7. Hunt

Chapter Seven  
>Hunt<p>

NCIS Special Agents Lisa DuBois and Ziva David, having obtained from SA Janet Levy positive ID of the man who'd assaulted and raped her, are only half done with their task.

"Jan, I need you to think, hard," Lisa says, leaning above her partner's head so Janet need not exert herself to look at her. She holds the color photograph of PFC Kurland's formal Marine portrait before Janet's eyes. "Do you recognize him? Do you know him?"

She can see confusion in her masked friend's eyes, probably because she's already answered a form of the question when she'd told them he'd beaten her.

"Honey, you were targeted. He was at the Golden Sphinx, but he left before you did, got to your building before you did, got to the elevator before you did, pressed _your_ floor. And when he left, he put his uniform shirt in a trash can eight doors east of your building before going back to his car that you said was parked right across the street from your door."

Despite the pain, Janet manages to nod. "Yessss."

"Jan, who is he? He was never a suspect, never a victim, never a witness. We've never had anything to do with him. _NCIS_ has never had anything to do with him. Who is he?"

Janet stares up at the picture, stares for a long time. "I... don't... know..."

"Jan, honey, there has to be a connection. You were Virginia State Police for six years. Could it be from there?"

She stares harder, longer. "I don't know."

xxx

"That's not good enough," Kevin Lamb declares to the uniformed Marine Captain seated before him. He is not going back to the hospital to tell Janet Levy that their quarry has slipped through their fingers.

"Perhaps if you tell me what the issue is," the facility commander says, "why you want to talk to him, I could-"

"We want him on Suspicion of Assault and _Rape_ of a Federal Agent."

The sledgehammer method is one he'd learned years ago from the senior agent behind him, and this time it's as effective on both the Captain and the Corporal as he could hope.

"Whatever we can do," Captain Morris says, "we will."

"Has he a cell phone?"

When Morris looks to Corporal Danvers behind them, they turn to the woman. "I'll pull his records immediately, Captain."

"DiNozzo," Lamb directs, "work closely with the Corporal."

The man has Point in this Investigation, so Gibbs says nothing about how large a mistake this order could be.

"Gibbs, you and I should speak to his Division."

xxx

As soon as they're outside the offices Gibbs is on his phone. "McGee, Kurland took a flight out of Reagan at 0500 yesterday. Find and track him." He snaps the phone closed before the man can answer.

Lamb looks to him but says nothing. He's well familiar with Gibbs' abruptness.

It's a short trip to the section where Kurland worked and there they find the senior officer, Lieutenant Carl Remington. The lab resembles every Science Lab Gibbs has ever seen, and the only one he's ever liked, to some degree at least, is Abby Sciuto's. He wishes the woman were here now to, as DiNozzo would say, speak the geek.

"In this section, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, we're doing advanced work in Submarine systems, specifically in Stealth work so they can't be detected by the enemy. We're always under the clock and under a budget a field mouse couldn't live on," the tall black man says. Though it's mid-afternoon the man looks like he's just put on the pressed uniform.

"What can you tell us of Private Kurland?"

"A good Marine, very reliable. Intelligent, but you have to be to work here. He gets along well with everyone."

"No one gets on well with _everyone."_

"Well," the man says with a you-got-me shrug, "in the beginning you know how it is. Guys come in from Civilian life, they have a period of adjustment. Everyone does. Lots of guys build up their triceps and abs pretty well before they learn how to be a Marine on more than the field. Kurland was one of those guys. Came from money, and after he leaves he'll be going into more. Grandfather started a Wall Street office way back when, father made it big _and_ saw the writing on the wall before the collapse in '80 whenever, managed to diversify and also sock a lot of cash away until the Street recovered, so he floated where a lot of guys drowned. I hear from him his father's very sick, that's why he took a Leave. If senior dies, Harry will inherit a ton."

"Kurland good at business?" He had better be; he'll need bail money.

"Neither know nor care. He's good at Tech, very good, and that's all that matters to me. Guy's bright, sharp and quick, learns what he has to at warp speed and doesn't need to be hand held. When you've got fifty men doing important work, last thing I need is someone who can't handle his share of the load."

x

"Ever hear him talk about NCIS or Federal Agents in general?"

"Nope. Listen, I've answered your questions but what's up? You're not here to ask if anyone 'talks about' NCIS."

"No, Lieutenant, we're not," Lamb says. "He ever have any trouble with women?"

Remington's eyebrows jump up and he brings them back down. "What sort of trouble?"

"Trouble getting along."

The undertone in the words conveys more than the phrase itself and Remington pauses, evidently trying to frame a careful answer. "We have two women on the staff and, well, neither of them seem to like him. It's nothing I've been asked to take notice of so I don't. They say they're uncomfortable, get 'vibes', but I can't hear about vibes and, quite frankly, wouldn't feel comfortable if I did have to address anything like that."

"We'd like to speak to these two women," Gibbs says. "Learn a bit about vibes."

xx

The first woman brought to the Conference Room to meet the agents is Private Patricia Court who, clad in Fatigues, cautiously eyes the two men with what started life as distrust but quickly grew up. She'd been brought from her station without explanation and introduced to the two stern NCIS Agents. Standing behind the offered seat, "Am I in trouble?" is the first thing she wants to know.

"No, Private, you're not," Lamb tells her in what he apparently tried to make a reassuring tone. Not even Gibbs feels reassured; he's been watching the mounting tension the man's been exhibiting since yesterday morning at Monroe. "Please have a seat."

She pulls back the chair and sits down ultra cautiously, as though her entire body were made of raw eggs. She no sooner touches the seat when she blurts "I haven't done anything, and whatever's happening I'm the last one to ask! I don't know anything about anything!"

"That include Private Harold Kurland?" As Gibbs had intended, this interrupts her fearful rush. She'd been quite unprepared for the Agents being interested in someone else beside her.

Whatever Court is afraid of, for the moment he doesn't know if it's related to this case, but before leaving here today he will. When someone's this afraid, there's a reason.

"Whaaa... What about–? I mean, what about Harry? I mean, Private Kurland?"

"You notice anything unusual about him?"

"Like what?"

If this is vibes or a concrete issue, he doesn't want to narrow her focus. It's up to her to do it. "Anything at all."

"Well... he's... you know."

"No. I don't know." He tries to keep his tone level, inviting, but he has the feeling this conversation is going to be less like fishing and more like dentistry. She's still afraid, but of what he doesn't know.

"Well, I... I don't know."

"What is your relationship with Private Kurland?"

"Who says we're having a relationship!"

'You do,' he's tempted to say. "What would you say your relationship was?"

"Well..." Now she's looking around at everything except him. If there were a fourth dimension, she'd be looking there too. "I don't like him, you know? He gives me... I don't know, I just feel uncomfortable around him. You know? It's not like he _does_ anything, I just... he feels creepy and I can't tell you why. He's a gentleman, never did anything, it's just that I get these 'vibes', you know, when he looks at me. It's like he's x-raying me. You know?"

Gibbs doesn't want to repeat himself, repeating can be narrowing so he lets silence answer her. Normally, people feel compelled to fill silence, and he's hoping she'll fill it to overflowing.

x

"I can't explain it. He's doesn't bother me, I've never had a bit of trouble with him. It's just a... a _feeling,_ you know?"

"Like he's x-raying you," Lamb prompts. Gibbs wishes he hadn't. The last thing an Investigator should do is guide a witness. He's going to have to coin a Rule about that for his own people. What would that be, 71?

_"Right._ Like I can read his mind and there's only one thing on it when he looks at me."

Neither Gibbs nor Lamb can object to the concept, but the vagueness does nothing for them. If they arrested a man who had x-ray eyes the planet would be one vast prison, and they'd each have cells of their own.

He'd opt for one with a Southern exposure. There are days when Mexico seems mighty appealing.

"Can you give us an example?" Gibbs asks, but isn't surprised when the eventual answer is

"Not really. Like I say, I can't remember his actually doing anything. It's just a feeling, you know?"

x

And in her turn, Private Louise Costello is considerably less helpful.

"Save me from Women's Intuition," Lamb says as they walk back toward Morris' office. Gibbs wonders how he gets on with Levy and DuBois, but considers sending DuBois and David out tomorrow to follow up on these women.

Court was definitely afraid of something, but until he knows what, and if it's in any way connected tp this case, it will do little good for him or Lamb to press. See what the women can dig up tomorrow.

xxx

They know that PFC Kurland left for his two week Leave at 2000 hours the evening before last, also know that he was identified by employees at the Golden Sphinx around midnight, suspect he assaulted Levy at about 0130 in the morning and departed at 0500 from Reagan airport. What they're interested in now is what he's done since landing in Los Angeles.

When they return to the Captain's office they find Tony working quite closely with Corporal Danvers, following his instructions to the letter. He crosses the room immediately as they enter, however, probably hoping they won't have noticed his leaning over her desk.

"Boss -" he glances from Gibbs to Lamb, who had been given Point on this Investigation, "Bosses. Corporal Betty ak ah Corporal Danvers has been very helpful. I have Private Kurland's cell number and passed it on to McBell. He says it's off, but I've contacted Henrietta Lange at the Office of Special Projects. Her people will be ready to pick him up as soon as it goes on."

Before Gibbs can answer his cell phone rings. He pulls the device from his pocket, notes the name on the screen and turns the display briefly to the men.

H. LANGE

xxx

Gibbs, Lamb and DiNozzo, having returned to NCIS for additional work and Abby's and McGee's updates, are out again after sunset at Reagan Airport at to meet the 2145 arrival from Los Angeles. It was a five hour flight from the west coast, so they know the OSP Agents' bioclocks still read 1845.

Rather than waiting in the Terminal, the men take advantage of their gold shields to meet their counterparts, after the regular passengers disembarked, about a hundred feet behind the jet.

Three men meet the trio; the middle man, six foot, lean, high and tight, flanked by a shorter man with a buzz cut and a mountainous black man with even less hair.

Gibbs notes the heavily worn Olympus sneakers on their quarry's feet.

"Here's your package," Special Agent G Callen says as his partner Sam Hanna unlocks his handcuffs and Tony DiNozzo locks on his own.

"Listen, guys, I keep telling you I didn't _do_ anything," Kurland protests. He doesn't try to fight his way out; restrained with five to one odds leaves no hope.

Gibbs, however, is convinced this is the right face. He's seen it often enough in the past two days and they need only Levy's final identification of her assailant. That will be done by a photograph taken tonight; it'll settle the legal requirement until the woman can leave the hospital.

"At least tell me what you think I did!"

Since Gibbs ignores the demand, no other agent will answer. Jennifer Shepherd's orders from yesterday remain quite clear: the man is not to be spoken to except in Interrogation or Holding. _Every_ conversation other than with his Lawyer is to be recorded, and these will be subjected to careful analysis. This case will not be lost by any random technicality.

x

Kevin Lamb herds the prisoner toward the distant car, keeping more control over his emotions than over the cuffed man.

"Good to see you," Gibbs says to Callen, not ignoring the larger man while addressing his old friend.

"How's Nell?" DiNozzo asks. He'd seen much of the Agent on the final day of the Memorial Day weekend convention, but far less than the McGeek and his wife had. However, what he'd seen of her in that climactic dénouement is burnt into his brain.

"She's good. Sends her love. And _we _bring our gratitude. We said it over MTAC but this is better." Grateful handshakes all about. Nell Jones had suffered terribly under Grekor Kanyicska until the Washington Agents had rescued her.

"Bet she's pissed at what happened afterward, though," DiNozzo notes. Kanyicska had made a million dollars cash bail seemingly hours after his arraignment and is now safely ensconced in parts unknown.

"She and her fiancé both. He's had her in Protective for the past two months," Callen says with a grin that helps convey the woman's feeling about that. "Won't let her out of his sight."

"Wait," DiNozzo says. "She's _engaged_?" He's having to mentally cross her off his list, the one Jeanne Benoit won't let him write. They'd had a single date after that tumultuous Convention at the Maritz had broken up - a challenge to do that and not have Jeanne get wind of it - and she'd given no hint of impending nuptials.

"Since five minutes after her plane touched down," comes the surprising answer. Now it's clear to DiNozzo, who hadn't seen a ring, which is something he's particular about checking for before locking sensors upon any woman. Then again, Nell Jones hadn't had on much in the way of adornment that afternoon in the Dealers' Room when McGee had make his dramatic solo flight.

"Eric met her on the stairs on the tarmac," Hanna says.

"Came as a big surprise to anyone who never met them," Callen confirms.

"She, however, spent the better part of a week stunned," the larger man says. "I thought one of those phasers got her right between the eyes."

"Saw that already," DiNozzo confirms, "with Palmer and former-Lee."

Callen checks his watch. "Love to hear about it, but Hetty wants us back an hour ago."

"You guys are going to invent a new form of jet lag."

"Tell me about it. Bye."


	8. The Forensic Nail

Chapter Eight  
>The Forensic Nail<p>

It was after 2250, nearing the end of Beta Shift, when Gibbs and Lamb turned PFC Harold Kurland over to SSA Melanie Kelman and her team with instructions to lock the demanding man into Holding and ask him nothing. Even when Abby, before leaving for the night, obtained a compelled cheek swab, no one told Kurland the Charges against him.

This is expressly to break his nerve and to comply with Director Shepherd's orders that Kurland not be questioned or even spoken to except while on film.

Gibbs and Lamb had both noted, when the prisoner was turned over to them, that the Olympus sneakers the man wore were particularly well worn and Gibbs had speculated that Abby could probably find about a hundred distinguishing Individual characteristics, none of which will match the pristine, off-the-shelf condition of the footprints found in the fifth/sixth landing of Levy's apartment house. Now the requested Search Warrant becomes even more important, both one in DC and the other in LA. Tony, in the meantime, is going over Kurland's Credit and Debit card purchases for the past few months. Those shoes won't break the case if not found, but both SSAs want that forensic nail for Kurland's coffin.

On Friday morning at 0730 Gibbs steps off the elevator and almost collides with DiNozzo and David. "Boss," Tony says after a quick sidestep as he holds up a single page document, "we have the Warrant for Kurland's apartment."

"Go." They're gone."

x

Kurland is brought from Holding, still clad in the California-weight clothes he was captured in and, a few minutes after 0800 Gibbs and Lamb watch him through the one-way glass from Ob 1.

"Good cop, bad cop," Lamb suggests, anxious to get in and tangle with Janet Levy's assailant. He'd used the power of his Federal Agent badge to see her over an hour ago. She's recovering, or rather getting better practice at speech, enough so she can whisper and be understood clearly.

The gauze that covers her face was fresh, but the mask isn't due to be removed until next week. The plaster encasing her fractured skull, the casing immobilizing her collar bone and the bands protecting her fractured ribs will take far longer. Doctor Peter's prognosis is six weeks.

She wants them gone now.

It will be two weeks at best before she'll be considered for home release. Since she lives alone, it's unlikely she'll get it.

x

"You'll be the good cop," Gibbs says, his tone saying 'final offer'.

"Rather be the bad."

"Good, and if you step out of that you're all the way out."

"Gibbs, that bastard beat and raped my partner. If you have no idea–!"

Gibbs turns and they're virtually nose to nose. "Last year four bastards tied up Michelle Lee and three of them raped her _seven times_. The other was going to rape her with a live _cattle prod_."

The sledgehammer blow is very effective, the conclusion even more so. "We put them in boxes."

It's true so far as it goes, but Ziva David had shot Dennis Whitney and then he, DiNozzo and David had killed Robert Kimmel, Steven Sullivan and Natasha Klein in a climactic fire fight even before they'd learned what had been done to Lee.

Every team had had a part in the horrors that Chaplain O'Mallory, before she became McGee, had suffered. Vast numbers of people know how she'd been beaten and raped over a four day horror. But only Tim McGee knows the true depth of her injuries and he'd almost murdered the man responsible.

All these intimate torments are Sealed in the Evidence boxes, and they will remain so to anyone not connected with the cases or trials. But now Lamb has a small glimpse into what his team has experienced and how outrage can lead to hunger for revenge. He hadn't let McGee give in to that 'need' when O'Mallory had been kidnapped, even before they learned what had been done to her, and Lamb's team won't either, not while he's Deputy SAIC.

He steps to the door and on the other side of it are McGee and Lamb's effective SFA by virtue of being the only active member of the team left.

Since he has nothing to say to McGee that wouldn't rehash the obvious, he doesn't say anything. Lamb's look to Lisa DuBois is as silent yet speaks volumes as the pairs switch places.

x

Gibbs is halfway through the Interrogation Room door, Lamb behind him, when Harold Kurland, looking even more haggard than he had through the glass, demands "One of you guys _tell me what you think I've done_!"

Gibbs takes the remaining seat and Lamb positions himself at the wall behind the prisoner, making sure to stay outside the man's peripheral vision.

He doesn't immediately see where Levy had ripped out a handful of Kurland's hair. He'd thought Abby had specified head, but there are other places from which a woman can rip out a clump of a man's hair.

Instead of answering their prisoner directly, Gibbs looks up to the left corner to the wall mounted camera - everything about this session is going to be exact and precise - and announces the day, Friday, the date, time and location. "Interview with Marine Private First Class Harold Kurland, Service Number 057646933, assigned to Naval Undersea Warfare Center, DC. Present are NCIS Supervisory Special Agents Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Kevin Lamb. Private Kurland will now be informed of his Article 31 Rights."

Lamb's recitation from his notebook is lengthy. Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is vastly longer than a civilian's Miranda Rights and is much more comprehensive, covering numerous permeations. Lamb makes certain he hits every word.

When asked if he is willing to be questioned in the absence of a Lawyer, Kurland insists "I don't need a lawyer. I haven't _done_ anything!"

"I now formally arrest PFC Harold Kurland," Gibbs announces for the tape, "on Charges of the Assault and Rape of NCIS Special Agent Janet Levy."

x

Kurland could not look more shocked if a grenade had detonated in his lap. It takes several moments for him to recover his voice.

"I did NOT!" He'd tried to get to his feet but is blocked by the shackles binding his wrists to ankles and the two foot chain between them. "I don't even know any Janet Levy!"

"Sit down," Gibbs commands the crouching man who has little choice but to comply. From the folder before him Gibbs slides out a portrait photograph of the woman. She's lovely, her black hair framing a smiling face, her peach colored blouse complimenting a peaches and cream complexion. "Sure you don't know her?"

Kurland stares at the photo. "I'm sure."

He slides out another picture. An MPDC officer had documented the scene on the stairwell landing before EMTs took Janet away. Her face is swollen, disfigured, blood hides most of her features, black hair is matted with blood both on her face and clumped about her head. Her eyes are swollen shut, her broken jaw misaligned to her left. Her mouth is forced open, her balled pink panties forced into her mouth and visible beyond the white gag of her bra.

"Recognize her now?"

"No! You think I did _that_?"

"About 0130 Wednesday before you flew out."

"No! I didn't do that!"

The next picture, a full body, is even more merciless. Her body from neck to spread thighs as she lays upon the fragments of her dress is covered with a hundred bruises and more blood has pooled between her thighs.

"Why'd you do it?"

"I didn't, I tell you!" he cries, tries to recoil from the images but Lamb, standing with his feet bracing the chair's, won't let him. "I DID NOT!"

x

The next picture is a Marine Fatigue Uniform shirt covered in large splotches of blood, the stitched name prominent.

"The blood: Special Agent Levy's. The shirt: Yours. The DNA on the shirt: Yours. The DNA from the hair she pulled out: Yours. The DNA from the skin under her nails: Yours! The sperm from the rape kit: _Yours_! Levy's photo identification of her assailant: _YOU_!"

As Gibbs drove Kurland grew paler by the second. Now he's white and his trembling whisper is barely audible. "I want that Lawyer."

xxx

"He lawyered up," Gibbs says, standing with Lamb before Jennifer Shepherd's desk.

"Even if he hadn't," the Director tells her Deputy, "I've already been in touch with JAG's Admiral Chegwidden. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie is already on her way in from Fall's Church."

He's not happy that Shepherd anticipated, or imposed, a lawyer against his own Rule 13, but she only follows such of his rules as she wants to. They collectively want every aspect of this case to go perfectly and if that means bringing in the Judge Advocate General's office... well, it did. They'll marshal their evidence and witness statements, MacKenzie can try to build some defense from the fragments that'll remain.

The trip from Virginia should take the woman two hours, and then they'll relight the grill under Kurland.

xx

When Gibbs and Lamb walk into the Forensics Lab Abby Sciuto, who's never known for her sedate behavior, mannerisms or wardrobe, is dancing to frantic music an even more frantic dance involving short hops, quick reverse kicks that have her running the risk of kicking her own butt together with placing her hands, back to back, on said butt, her fingers extended like a feathered tail.

"Practicing your Turkey Trot?" Lamb asks.

She turns, still bouncing enough that her pigtailed hair snaps to the rhythm. "My celebration dance."

"Then give me something to celebrate," Gibbs directs.

"And you'll join me?"

He just shakes his head, imagines trying and going out on Disability Leave twenty seconds in. "More like in a waltz."

She bounces over to her workstation, picks up the remote control and, to his surprise, substitutes a waltz for the turkey music.

"I'm impressed."

"One of Sammy's performances. Someone made a CD of the Washington Renaissance last year. Hear her?"

The young woman is Fifth Violin; he can make out the musicians collectively, but distinguishing Fifth out of how many? "I'll take your word for it."

"I'll tell her you liked her performance. "

"You do that." She'll probably see through the white lie as easily as he could. "What have you got that I'll like?" He sees, just in time, the devilish gleam in her eyes. "About the case."

She lowers the volume. "That's what I was celebrating."

x

She leads them to her Evidence table. In order there are a tube containing a white swab with the cotton end cut off, Kurland's bloody shirt now in a plastic Evidence bag rather than paper, a small Petri dish containing items so tiny the dish looks empty, another closed dish with several hairs, the hospital Rape Kit with each collected sample in individual tubes or Petri dishes. Below each item is one or several pages of white paper containing charts, graphs and sundry information.

"I've been all over it," she tells the men. "The cheek swab I personally took from Harold Kurland. The blood on the shirt is absolutely definitely Janet Levy's. The DNA covering every square inch of the shirt, the DNA in the hairs, in the sperm, everything matches. I even went several steps further and ran, among other things, a mitochondrial comparison." She faces Lamb. "Rule 29: Anticipate every possibility. He's not going to get away because of anything _I_ failed to do."

"I'm sure."

She turns to Gibbs, almost challenging in her aspect. She doesn't often quote one of his rules to him, but "Never considered it."

"Thanks, Gibbs. As the final nail in his coffin, the mitochondrial analysis shows each and every sample on this table came from the son of the same woman."

x

"Not quite the final nail."

"What's left? You've got positive Forensic ID, you've got Janet's fingering him, you've got opportunity as he was with her in her home, you've got method–"

"Motive. Why'd he do it?"

"Because he's a sick son of a bi–"

"We need more than that."

"Not even the women in his place trust him," Lamb reminds him.

"One of the women," he counters, "and she's vague. She's going on a 'vibe'. The other one, she had less."

"I like vibes, Gibbs," Abby says. "Not every crime has a motive."

"Rule 33," he admits.

She hesitates. "Not sure I remember that one."

Maybe she didn't out-rule him. "There are all sorts of reasons to commit a crime. They don't have to make sense to us."

"See?"

"Reasons. Even Hitler had his reason."

"He was a psycho," Lamb says.

Abby looks over the line of evidence. "And I'm betting you find out this guy is too."


	9. Gladiators

Chapter Nine  
>The Gladiators<p>

"McGee," Gibbs calls as he and Lamb walk into the bullpen, "you find a link between Kurland and Levy yet?"

"No, boss. Tony and Ziva are still checking out Kurland's place. He grew up in San Francisco. Levy spent almost her whole life in various parts of Virginia. When she was a State Trooper he was in Los Angeles. Since he was assigned to NUWC her case files don't show she went there."

"That's true," Lamb confirms. "Until yesterday I'd only been there twice, and Jan hadn't even finished FLETC until after that."

He knows too little about her. "When did she join your team?"

"Bob brought her aboard three years ago."

"Need to talk to DuBois."

x

In less than a minute the woman enters the Operations Division from the corridor beyond Shepherd's suite. Gibbs fills her in briefly. "We've found no connection between Levy and Kurland."

"Neither have I," DuBois declares. "But there has to be one. She doesn't remember meeting Kurland before Tuesday night."

"He beat the hell out of her," Lamb says, frustration fueling anger. "Broke her jaw, fractured her skull; if he was just going to rape her why the beating?"

"How did he know _exactly_ where she lived, even to her floor?" Gibbs has had this question nagging at him for days.

"Tell us about her dating habits," Lamb orders DuBois.

x

She's not too happy to talk before so large a group, but that ended when Levy had been attacked. Since then, nothing has been private. "Jan liked men. What more can I say? She liked to date. She stepped out of her comfort zone - a lot."

"What does that mean?" When Gibbs sees she'd hesitate he says "She used the word 'flirtfest'."

Lisa is angry as she looks at Kevin. He's the only source of that term. However, she can't be as annoyed as she'd like to be. If this case is to be solved, all of them need the same facts and these must also be shared with two other teams.

"Jan and I both like to go out, particularly if we've had rough or stalled days, the days when you've made no more progress at sixteen than you had at oh eight."

She's glad no one points out that 'we've all had them'.

"Sometimes we'd go out and flirt. Sometimes we might tie a few guys in knots."

"Either of you ever tie Kurland in knots?"

"No. Jan says she never saw the guy before Tuesday night, and I never laid eyes on him until last night."

"And she doesn't remember him from the bar?"

"She says 'no'. He never made a pass at her. In fact, he left before she did according to the staff. That's why it makes no sense. How did he get opposite her building before she did?"

"Did she go there often?"

She tries hard to remember but "I don't think so. She did go, but not often, and I've never been there before this started."

"She ever bring anyone home from there? Someone who might know Kurland?"

"She doesn't bring home strays. If she's going out, she stays out. She has Commendations on her walls, but only her friends know what she does."

xxx

Within a half hour a woman wearing a Marine Colonel's uniform, an NCIS Visitor's pass attached to her pocket beside several rows of quite distinctive medals, is escorted into the bullpen. Gibbs, out of his seat and around his desk, waves the escorting agent off with thanks before greeting her.

She approaches with a smile and outstretched hand. "Well, well, well, Leroy... Jethro...Gibbs."

"How you doing, Mac?"

"Great. Better than you, in fact. Still playing fast and loose with the law, Corporal?"

"Now would I do that, Corporal?"

"In an Afghan minute."

At that moment DiNozzo and David enter the bullpen, he carrying a paper Evidence bag. "Well, well, well," DiNozzo says, unconsciously copying her as he comes up behind the skirted officer, "the Corporals have a history." Gibbs is so often known for being a Gunnery Sergeant it sometimes seems Mike Franks had struck the ground and Gibbs had sprung up full grown in that persona.

She turns to him, examines him from shoes to hair. "You're a bit too young to hear the sordid details, Agent DiNozzo."

He's impressed. "You know me."

"Your reputation precedes you." She turns to McGee, still seated at his desk. "And you are definitely too young."

"What did_ I _do?"

"How much time have you got, Agent McGee?"

x

Gibbs doesn't try to hold back a grin. In less than thirty seconds the formidable woman has devastated both men, and now here comes Lamb to try his luck.

"Hello," she says. "I don't believe we've met."

DiNozzo's and McGee's looks are so easy to read: 'We haven't met either but you hit us with smiling mortars.'

"Supervisory Special Agent Kevin Lamb."

"Ah." All the levity drains from her tone. "Sorry, I thought you were part of the Corporal's team. I'm sorry about your Agent Levy."

"I'll pass that along."

The seriousness of the issue removes any further taste for banter and the former Corporal with the history with Corporal Gibbs reverts to Marine Colonel Sarah MacKenzie of the Judge Advocate General's Office.

"Gentlemen, I've reviewed exactly four and one half pages of the case against my client before my drive up here, so before I meet with him to get his details I need to see yours."

It takes twelve minutes to summarize the case against PFC Kurland, with heavy emphasis on the Forensics and how brutally Janet Levy was assaulted. The men would like to characterize it as an 'open-and-shut' case but MacKenzie beats them to it with her assurance that there's no such thing.

"Sure you're up to this?" DiNozzo challenges.

"On Defense assignments I have an 84 percent record."

"That's high," he admits without a trace of pleasure. "Did the Director have to call in such a heavy hitter?"

"You fight the gladiator you're assigned, gentlemen. Now, if someone will escort me to my client, I'll see you in the arena."

"McGee, you do the honors."

x

When they're gone, DiNozzo addresses the two Supervisors. "I come bearing gifts. Well, a gift, since they're a pair." He opens the large paper bag and allows them to look inside. There lay top to top two sneakers and he moves the bag to display the soles, and the red within the grooves of the treads. "We found them right in his bedroom, on the floor by the bed."

"Get them to Abby." Tony hands the bag to Ziva.

"Then you," Gibbs orders the woman, "and Lisa DuBois go to the hospital. Make certain Levy never had any man from one of her 'flirt fest' thingees in her apartment. DuBois thinks no. I want to know how he got to her place first."

The woman nods and departs for the elevator.

"I repeat," DiNozzo says, "did the Director have to call in such a heavy hitter?"

"Director called JAG. Chegwidden assigned the heavy hitter. I wanted you to know what to expect. If you're feeling intimidated–"

"Not me, boss."

"Then lock this down. Make this so tight a jellyfish couldn't slide out."

DiNozzo glances at Lamb, can practically read his mind. 'Tighter.' "Piece of cake, bosses." He returns to his desk, veers off. "I'll see what Duc– What Isles has to say about Kurland."

"Watch out for Sky," Lamb calls.

DiNozzo halts but forces himself to move, hoping neither man saw the hesitation. "How bad can it be? I'll charm the - err."

xx

When DiNozzo steps off the elevator he sees Kate Todd's honey-blonde clone and Abby's happier roommate seated together at Ducky's desk and stops dead, grateful the door sensor hadn't detected him and slid aside the too loud glass and metal pneumatic doors. Pneumatic, as George Orwell used it in 1984, is definitely a word that applies to the women.

Maura Isles, presented in profile seated in the chair, wears a screaming scarlet dress that barely reaches her knees.

Sammy Sky sits perched on the edge of the wooden dress, facing her, but her slowly swinging legs are backed by the dark wood. She's smaller than Isles, five two, and her blue dress is too. In her two inch blue heels she's only going to come to five four, still a good distance below him. If she stood between himself, Gibbs and McGee, they could easily hold a conversation over her pale blonde head.

He takes a deep breath, sighs heavily and that's enough for the traitorous doors to slide apart and betray his presence.

Sammy hops off the edge of the desk, a maneuver he would never dare try in high heels, and the thought makes him want to smack himself back to consciousness.

"Hi, Tony!"

"Hi, Sammy. Doctor Isles." Maura gives him a smile that makes him work harder to remember Jeanne, but for a moment it's a true challenge. The woman is a menace to fidelity. He glances pointedly at the three gleaming silver tables as he passes them, anything to keep on track. Doctor Hospital or Doctor M.E. Why does he have to be assaulted with the choice? "Slow day?"

"Absolutely dead," Sky says with a grin. "I was _hoping_ a body would come for me to practice on."

His mind flashes through a hundred possible responses, each and every one of which could have him facing a 'green-yellow-red light behavior' interview by the end of the day. He'd only thought a moment ago that he was being unfairly tried.

Seeing her broader grin, he's absolutely certain that's why she'd phrased it so.

"I need a psych evaluation." Now both women are far too happy. "On Harold Kurland."

"Oh. Bummer," Sky declares, her mood dropping a hundred fifty points.

"I haven't spoken to him," Isles says.

"I don't want to," Sky declares.

"Gibbs tells us one of the women on his team considers him creepy, though he's done nothing to her. In fact, we can't find anyone he's done anything to before Janet Levy. No record of trouble, no problems, he seems to have no issues except women get 'vibes' from him."

"Eighty three percent of women tested in a Piers-Wescott survey," Isles says, "tested high for awareness of danger when presented with a face-to-face potential threat without overt moves, only the thoughts of the test participant in his relationship with the subject. There was no indication that there was any extra-sensory phenomenon associated with it. It was an amalgam of various non-verbal cues that made the determination, an example of an atavistic awareness of potential danger."

"Well, I'm not an atavist," Sammy says with a broad grin, but seeing the look in Tony's eyes she translates, "a primitive; but sometimes I just won't Scene with someone."

Isles turns to her. "Excuse me?"

x

Her shoulders drop hard. "Darn it." Once again she's overshared. Focused on this issue, she'd gotten careless. Now, trapped under the Doctor's gaze, she won't back down.

"I'm what you'd call a 'Bottom', or a 'Sub' if you prefer. I like to be tied up. I like it when the guy controls me. I like it rough, but there are rules. It's allowed to hurt, but it's not supposed to hurt. You get it?"

Tony knows the bisexual violinist is leaving a lot out, but Maura only says "Your secret is safe with us."

"Well, actually, you were the only one who didn't know. But the point is, there are some guys, when we meet and... negotiate is a nice word... there are some guys I will not Scene with. It might be something in their eyes, in their hands, the way they speak, the way they sit, whatever. Sometimes I can tell this guy's not to be trusted. I like it to hurt, but I don't want to _be_ hurt."

DiNozzo considers risking an idea. "Would you see what vibes you get from–"

"Absolutely _not_!" She folds her arms across her chest in a gesture of firmness, and for the first time since he'd met her there's no elation in her pale blue eyes. "You've had more than enough warning from his co-worker before he beat the hell out of one of your partners. There is no way he's ever getting even a look at me."

x

Tony decides he can't get around that, and certainly cannot blame her. "Either of you ever hear of a case like this; good upstanding citizen, if we're to believe the Corps which hasn't killed anyone since they were formed, suddenly snaps and does this to a woman?"

"In 2002, in Lubbock, Texas," Maura says, "Alan Rubin assaulted one of his co-workers. No motive was ever ascribed to the act but over the course of several hours he literally broke every bone in her body. The woman died eight hours into the prolonged assault."

Tony tries to get through this, but more than imagining how it can relate to this case he can't move on without learning "How do you happen to know that?"

"I read about it back in 06."

Does she have a photographic memory like Melanie? He looks forward to finding out. "Any idea why Kurland would jump off the deep end?"

"Well, there's no indication yet that he did. I would have to study him far more closely in order to consider that. In the meantime, there really is no such thing as a motiveless crime. You have to find it."

"As simple as that, huh?"

xxx

This morning Janet Levy is more aware and stronger than in Lisa and Ziva's previous visits. She's still encased in gauze about her head but her eyes are clearer and practice has made an improvement in her ability to speak without moving her clamped jaw.

"Jan," Lisa says, bending close so the woman can see her without trying to turn her head, "Kevin brought Kurland in. He was captured and brought back by OSP." She can read gratitude and joyful relief in her partner's eyes.

"He denies everything, of course," Ziva says.

Lisa doesn't want Janet dwelling on this. "Jan, can you remember any more? Is it possible you've seen this guy? Ever?"

"I... still don...t remember."

"But you've been to the Golden Sphinx before?" She's really growing to detest that name.

"Yes," Janet whispers. She can still be understood better when whispering rather than working to frame the words aloud.

"Did you ever take anyone home, someone who might have told someone?" For the entire trip out she'd detested this line of questioning and now, seeing the vague look in her partner's eyes, she sees her doubts bear a bumper crop of rancid fruit.

"I don't bring anyone to my apartment. NCIS." The women know that many Agents do not reveal their professional lives if they can help it, other than to family and friends whom they trust.

"When he was in the elevator with you, did you sense anything?"

"No. Caught me by surprise. Never expected it. He was checking out my legs. I'd hoped he might try to hit on me. I never expected _that_."

The door behind them opens and Ira and Sarah Levy enter.

The interview, such as it had been, is over.


	10. Hot Seat

Chapter Ten  
>Hot Seat<p>

At ten minutes before noon Colonel Sarah MacKenzie sent up word that she and her client were ready to speak with the Investigators. But when Gibbs, Lamb and DiNozzo enter Observation Room 1 they find it already occupied.

"Abs? What are you doing here?"

She gives him a broad smile as well as an excellent impression of a schoolgirl in her crisp white blouse, red plaid skirt and matching tie, a most festive combination quite unlike her normal Goth attire. "I knew you'd come here first." She holds out a file folder. "Merry Christmas."

"Christmas in July," Lamb observes.

"Works for me," Gibbs counters, always happy to get good evidence from Abby.

"I'm done with the sneakers. They're his, but the blood is definitely Jan's. He's guilty as Sin. I want to watch you guys toss him into the Lake of Fire."

They look over the report. Gibbs reorders certain pages and incorporates them into the folder he already carries. "We'll try to give satisfaction. Meantime, you can stay, but you're left in DiNozzo's mercy."

"Huh! The mood I'm in, he's definitely at my mercy." The pair regards each other as if eager for the challenge.

"Play nice, children. I don't want to have to come out and separate you." He leads Lamb out and the battle is on.

x

When the contestants are seated about the table MacKenzie fires the first volley. "Gentlemen, I have advised my client he is not to answer any questions." They're not surprised; the surprise comes when she concludes that "He does, however, insist upon making a Statement."

Gibbs likes Statements, they can be very good and useful when a suspect, flush with confidence, says too much. "Go ahead."

"First, I didn't do anything to your agent, ever. I don't know her, didn't touch her, didn't rape her, didn't anything her. I was in Los Angeles with my brother Larry to see our dying father when your agents came into our home, handcuffed me in front of my family and dragged me all the way back here. I don't know anything about your agent or anything else. I have never raped, never molested a woman in my life! I am _innocent_!"

"Your brother?" Gibbs asks. He knew one existed, but he hadn't impinged upon this case.

"Larry."

"He's in the Service Record," MacKenzie says, tapping the folder she'd been given upstairs, "under next of kin." She opens it, scans the data. "Father Jacob, formerly a welder. Mother Ann, formerly secretary, Brother Lawrence, he's monozygotic, a Journalist. It's all there. Don't you read your own reports?" she asks as she closes the folder, her tone conveying her opinion of their preparation.

Lamb doesn't care about unimportant trivia. "Where were you from 2200 hours Tuesday through 0200 Wednesday?"

"At home. Asleep."

"Do you have any witnesses?"

"_No_. I said I was home alone."

"You said you were asleep."

"I sleep alone."

"What were you doing at 0130 hours Wednesday?"

"Agent Lamb, my client has already answered that. If you're trying to catch him in an inconsistency you'll have to do better."

"Oh, I'll do better. I have witnesses that put him at the Golden Sphinx bar from 2200 hours Tuesday through a few minutes after midnight. I have positive identification from the victim, a member of my team, that your client assaulted her. I have his uniform shirt at the scene with her blood all over it. I have his sperm from a Rape Test kit. And your client doesn't have an alibi for one _second_ of that night."

"Look, I told you I'm sorry your agent got... whatever, but I didn't touch her!"

x

Gibbs slides from the file folder before him the picture of Kurland's uniform shirt open upon Abby's table, the blood prominent upon it.

"Yes, I saw that before. It's not mine." At Gibbs' long look, he changes his mind. "Okay, the shirt is mine, but the blood isn't. I never had that on my shirt."

He's not surprised by the denial, only disappointed at the flimsiness of it. The man has had hours and this is the best he can do? He slides out yet another picture, one of the ones Abby has just given him. "We searched your apartment. You didn't make these hard to find."

The soles of the sneakers are turned up in the next photograph. "The blood's been positively identified as Janet Levy's."

"Those aren't mine!"

The next photo is a blown up copy of his financial records from the bank, dated barely a month ago, where Payless is marked as the vendor for $26.87. "These are for the ones you're wearing now."

Kurland looks to his Lawyer.

"Don't bother," Gibbs advises, pulling out copies of Warrants for the property and the bank records.

"Are you a somnambulist, Private?" Lamb asks.

"A what?"

"Do you walk in your sleep?"

"What's that got to do with–?"

"Because we have a ton of evidence," he waves his hand over the papers already on the table and to the folder, "and eye witnesses, all of which say you beat and raped Special Agent Levy, and you'd better come up with some excuse that's a _Hell_ of a lot better than 'I was asleep'."

x

"Well I can't, because that's the truth."

"You got something against Jews, Private?"

"What's that got to do–?"

"Agent Lamb, that is a very inappro–"

"Black haired women?"

"Certainly not!"

"Women who go out to bars?"

"No!"

"Women who show a little too much leg?"

"No!"

"Agent Lamb, if you have a poin–"

"Or too much _tit_?"

MacKenzie leans in. "That does it!"

"Or maybe just women who blow you off when you hit on them."

"I DIDN'T HIT ON ANYBODY!"

"Agent Lamb, this line of questioning–!"

"Is mine. We're not in Court, Counselor."

"No, but the next time you speak to my client you will be." She turns to Kurland. "Don't answer any more questions."

"I wish you would," Gibbs says quietly. It's the quietest and least emotional statement made since this sparring match began and gets the combatants' attentions.

x

For many long moments Gibbs and MacKenzie lock gazes and it's half a minute before she nods. "Go ahead. Ask _me_."

"I'm having a problem."

Another long, probing search until finally "What's your problem?"

"Motive." The Lawyer and her client exchange somewhat mystified glances; Kurland doesn't understand where this sudden detour is leading and MacKenzie has rarely encountered such candor about what the prosecution doesn't have this early in the negotiations. "You see, I can't figure out why."

"Why? Why what?"

"Your client has a pretty clean record. His Psych Profile as recent as March doesn't hint at any of this. Special Agent Levy never met your client before Tuesday night. NCIS never had him as a Witness, Suspect, Person of Interest; we never heard of him until Wednesday afternoon. We have four teams looking into everything, practically every second of Special Agent Levy's and your client's lives. They can't find any connection between them. So far as my computer man says, they haven't even Internet Chatted."

"Agent Gibbs, I reviewed my client's Service Record. It's so clean you can eat off it."

"Yet all our evidence, and Agent Levy, say he ambushed her in the elevator of her building, dragged her into the stairwell, beat and raped her and left her for dead."

"I didn't!"

"Method, opportunity and motive," he tells the man. "We have the method. You had the opportunity. What's the motive?"

"There is none!"

"Even a rabid dog has a reason to bite. Private, if you're a psychopath you've hid it well."

"I'm not! I didn't attack your friend."

"We have witnesses that put you at the bar. You left before her but got to her place first. You knew what floor she lives on because you pushed the button. You trapped her in the elevator, beat her, dragged her into a stairwell where you beat her again and then raped her."

"Wait! I didn't follow her there? I led her?"

"Seem to have."

x

Lamb picks the line back up. "She says she doesn't know you. How do you know her?"

"I don't!"

"Then how were you there first? How did you find her, Someone at the bar tell you?"

"No one told me _Anything_!"

"Then you knew her already?"

"No!"

"Where she lives?"

"I've never met her!"

"Then why did you rape her?"

"I DIDN'T RAPE HER!"

"The DNA says you did," Gibbs reminds him.

"Then the DNA is _wrong_!"

Gibbs' look is very eloquent.

"Don't say anything more," MacKenzie directs.

"Even without a motive," Lamb declares, "we've enough for a Court Martial. Won't be the first time we've had a Conviction without a Motive. Won't be the last."

"Then, Agents," MacKenzie says, rising, "we'll see you in Court."

x

The Agents step out into the orange cinderblock hall, Lamb grimly satisfied, Gibbs feeling none of it.

"Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs!"

They turned at the first 'Gibbs' as Abby rushes down the hall, a paper flapping in her hand. She slides to a stop.

"What is it, Abby?" The last time he'd seen her so excited was... two mornings ago.

"You've got to set him free! He didn't do it!"

"_WHAT_?" Lamb shouts, feeling like she's told him he has to give back an Oscar. His voice reverberates through the corridor.

She holds the paper up to them.

"Private Kurland, he's innocent!"


	11. SNiPs

Chapter Eleven  
>SNiPs<p>

"What do you mean he's innocent?" Lamb demands, ignoring the paper Abby holds across her chest like a banner. "You said your DNA tests said he was guilty!"

"Yes. But now they say he's innocent."

"Abby," Gibbs says, determined to abort the forthcoming firestorm and get some real answers. He notes DiNozzo coming out of Ob 1; the man can't stay there even with the intercom turned off, but he focuses on the elated woman. "Talk to me."

"Remember last evening I took a cheek swab, so now I have evidence that positively, definitely, absolutely came from Harold Kurland. I ran it overnight through the usual PCR and STR sequences and did all the standard tests and got the results I already told you about. I also did a mitochondrial test that showed the donor of every single sample was the son of the same mother."

"Sounded like a lock to me."

"Me _too_. Well, I also did an SNP because I really, really, really wanted this guy."

"I know."

"But I didn't read the SNiP this morning because I knew what it would say until I found out his brother's monozygotic. That's when I ran down to read the test."

"That's true, boss," Tony says. "She nearly left a Roger Rabbit hole in the door."

"You should be so lucky as to keep my sexy silhouette, Tony."

"Abby." Gibbs has had more than too much.

"Look!" The paper is filled with lists of 7 character code and she points to a sequence, then to another on another line, tapping back and forth from one to the other. AAGCCTA and AAGCTTA mean nothing to the three agents. "This nucleotide pair is supposed to contain a cytosine here. But it doesn't." She points to the second set, giving the revelation a grand flare. "It's a _thymine_."

The men exchange bewildered looks and she knows her flare has fizzled among the laymen. "Abby," Lamb probes first, "what does that mean?"

She sighs in heavy exasperation. "It means Harry Kurland's innocent, of course."

x

"Abby," Lamb tries again, "how many languages do you speak?"

"I'm not Ziva, Kevin. One: English."

"Well I speak three but your English is not my English. What does this mean in my English?"

"It means this allel contains an SNP, a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, pronounce it 'SNiP'. They occur on average about once in every 300 nucleotides, meaning 10 million SNiPs per genome. They can be coding or non-coding but they're _always_ non-homogenous. In monozygotics I had my doubts of finding a SNiP right away but I got lucky. SNiPs are more prevalent in non-coding regions than coding but the density predictability is enhanced by the presence of microsatellites. This one shows a base mutation in Apolinprotein-E–."

"Abby, _my_ English."

"The fingerprints don't match," Tony translates for the beleaguered man, and for Gibbs who's also starting to look shell shocked.

"Genetic fingerprints, right. Harold Kurland says he and his brother are monozygotic twins; that's a rare case where the zygote, after it starts to develop on the way to becoming a fetus, divides in two. Both are absolutely identical, _super_-identical, because they started life as one person."

"Rule 36," Gibbs says, the case finally coming into focus.

Tony looks to Lamb, translating "If you feel like you're being played, you probably are."

"The DNA off the shirt came from Harry Kurland," Abby continues her ultra-fast recap, "because it's his shirt, but that's not the only DNA I pulled. The hairs on the collar are from a different, _very_ similar source. It took SNiPs to tell them apart."

Gibbs turns back to Abby. "So everything we have from the Crime Scene didn't all come from Harry Kurland."

"No," she hoists the paper in self-satisfied triumph. "They came from _Larry_."

xx

Gibbs and Lamb reenter I1 to find MacKenzie gathering her papers, ready to leave. "Another question?" she asks.

"A lot more questions," Gibbs says, taking the forward seat. "Just different ones."

MacKenzie and Kurland exchange looks, each ultimately admitting they have little choice. They can hear them now, even if she doesn't allow answers, or they can regret not hearing them when they reach trial. They sit back down, the uniformed woman facing Gibbs directly. "What questions?"

Gibbs directs his focus to Kurland. "Tell us about your brother?"

"Larry? Why?"

He spreads his hands upon the table. "I asked nicely?"

x

Truthfully, he wants answers before he reveals that Harold could well be slipping a noose about his brother's neck. It seems fair, however, for if he's right then Larry Kurland has already slipped one about Harry's neck.

He's also confident that he's about to get the long sought after motive that had been churning his gut for two days.

"What about him?"

"Where is he?"

By Kurland's expression his suspicion meter has gone up another ten points, but he apparently decides there's no reason not to answer. "We each went out to L.A. to visit our father. He's still there."

"He's not in the Corps, is he?" There had been another Kurland in the records, but that had been Frank from Florida. MacKenzie had already given the answer, but he wants to hear it directly.

"No, he works for 'We' magazine. Look, what is this about Larry?" he demands, his patience with the segue apparently exhausted.

For Gibbs, Laurence Kurland's connection with 'We' magazine seals his suspicions.

x

"You say your father is sick," Gibbs says.

For Kurland it's another mad segue. "I say my father's _dying_, while we're here playing twenty thousand questions!"

"But your brother's there. You traveled together?" He already knows there was one Kurland booked on that flight.

"No, he came out later, just got there about three hours before you people picked me up."

"Agent Gibbs," MacKenzie cuts in, "if you have a point to make, would you please make it?"

Gibbs ignores her. "You and your brother stand to inherit a lot when your father dies?"

"Couple million, which is not going to make up for losing him."

"Is the Will final?"

"_How the Hell would I know?_"

"Then it can be changed."

"_What the F*ck difference does that make_?"

x

Gibbs spreads a merciless series of 8 x 10 photos back onto the table, the same ones he'd battered the man with earlier. "Private Kurland, you're charged with having attacked a woman and beating her nearly dead, conduct vastly unbecoming a United States Marine. If convicted, that alone would earn you a Dishonorable Discharge. Then you raped her. Upon Conviction that too would get you a Dishonorable, even if you hadn't beaten her.

"Furthermore, your victim is an NCIS Special Agent, one pledged to defend you and yours from enemies foreign and domestic, your professional ally and protector. She had no way of anticipating your brutality and after the assault began she couldn't protect herself. The doctors report a hundred sixty seven bruises and lacerations, some in unspeakable places. We can prove you stalked her and ambushed her."

"BUT I DIDN'T!"

"After you beat her brutally enough to put her in the hospital for a month - if she hadn't died from your sneak attack - you then _raped_ her. Those injuries are both physical and psychological. It will be years before she recovers _if she ever does._

"We have witnesses and evidence enough to convict. You're looking at twenty five years in Leavenworth; Life if she had died." He pushes each picture closer, but waits until Kurland's eyes meet his.

"Now how do you suppose you father is going to look on all that?"

x

Harold Kurland's face had been steadily losing color during Gibbs' drive, but when he looks upon this matter as a whole and in respect to his father's reaction to the news he's white as the photo backs.

"This can't be real," he whispers, a long gasp. The agents can see in his eyes that he's worked out the answer Gibbs had been leading to with his persistent interest in his identical twin brother. He clutches the table edge as though to stop the room from spinning about him.

They give him time to recover from the realization of what his brother has done, recover from how his brother has framed him, recover from what Larry has done to an innocent woman to carry out his scheme.

x

"Why? No, forget that. You're right. Dad's very sick, he's near death." Harold Kurland has to stop, hit hard by that thought. They're sure he's been hit hard many times, but never as hard as with this added burden.

"He won't die yet. Couple of weeks, the doctors say. More than enough time... to be hurt... by word of a son... who beat and raped... a helpless woman. And to be angry enough to do something to punish me, with my loving brother there coaching him while I'm tried for what he did."

He needs more time, more than ever, and tears almost break through his resistance. "How?" he asks, a hollow whisper, all that's left of his overtaxed voice. "How did you know?"

"Your brother working for 'We' magazine settled it."

"I don't understand. What does that have to do with anything?"

"They did a Feature a few months ago." He detests remembering that long Feature and the terrible problems it had created for most of the "Women of NCIS."

"I think I remember it. It was part of a big feature, wasn't it?"

"On the women of all the Military Law Enforcement Agencies, CGIS, CID, OSI, everything."

"I remember now."

"Your brother had access to the records, the releases to use their photos and the details from the interviews before they were trimmed for the magazine. Probably used it to target I don't know how many women. Maybe he chose his victim or victims, then followed them or in some way learned more about them. We'll find out all he got when our LA Agents bring _him_ in. When your father took a turn, he chose Janet Levy and attacked her."

x

He can't wait to get hold of Lawrence Kurland's records and see how widely his plan had spread. How many of his fellow Agents were targets before he took final aim?

"He got hold of one of your uniforms, your sneakers," he indicates the photos.

"He's over my place a lot. I have plenty of shirts, I'd probably take a while to miss one. When I bought these," he points down to his sneakers, "I tossed those away," he finishes, pointing to the picture of the bloody footwear.

"He collected them, followed her, left early to beat her home, then after you were gone, before he left, he put the bloody sneakers back in your bedroom."

"My God." Kurland focuses on the official NCIS Portrait of the lovely woman, unable to look on how she appears now. "He did this... she suf... she... this happened because he wanted dad's money."

"Yes," Lamb tells him with no trace of sympathy for anyone but his innocent partner.

x

"May I see her?"

Lamb can't believe he's heard him right. "What?"

"I have to see her, to make things right."

"Make things _right_? How are you going to do that?"

For a very long time Kurland searches for an answer, searches in the photos of the woman, the before beauty and the now victim. "I... don't know." He looks back up at Lamb. "But I have to try."

Lamb considers carefully. This man walking in on her could send Janet over the edge, but she's had Lisa with her all afternoon, effectively waiting to give her the good news when Kurland cracked and confessed or else when they sent him down for the long count.

A Kurland _will_ go down for that long count.

He pulls out his cell phone.

"I'll take you."


	12. The Face of Evil

Chapter Twelve  
>The Face of Evil<p>

"So that's the whole story," Special Agent Lisa DuBois tells her partner from beside her bed. When she'd gotten the call Janet had been asleep so she'd had plenty of time to absorb from Kevin, from Leroy Gibbs, from Abby and from Colonel MacKenzie the complete story before waking the slumbering woman and conveying everything.

She had ignored the '_beep_' from her cell phone over fifteen minutes ago because she'd run out of time long before she'd run out of story, but her boss and the brother can cool their heels outside until Jan's ready to take this.

This is so surreal she's not even sure how she's supposed to take it, let alone how Janet is. She's spent two days hating Harold Kurland, a man she's never seen, and now he's here to _apologize_ to Jan, to make _right_ each of their parts in a conspiracy that's almost beyond belief, certainly beyond reason.

Jan should certainly hate Harold Kurland, except that now she should hate Laurence Kurland. Both she and Kurland are victims of a scheme to steal an inheritance. If her life isn't destroyed, it is close to being shattered and there is nothing reasonable about the reason.

x

She waits a minute, waits for Jan's eyes to finally turn back to her. "You okay, hon?"

"You know," Janet whispers slowly, carefully framing the words past her locked jaw, only her lips moving, "that I _hate_ it when you ask me _stupid questions_."

"I know."

"He didn't even care enough to hate me. I was just a means to get a Will changed.

"Yes."

"It could've been anyone from that damned article."

"Yes."

"First that _coward_ Trovillot fakes those nude pictures and ruins my life..."

"Yes."

"Now this _bastard_ nearly kills me, _rapes_ me, just to get a few hundred million."

"Yes."

"If you and Kev don't kill him before I get out of here I'm gonna really kill him!"

"Yes."

"Will you STOP agreeing with me?"

"Hard to bitch at you when you're right."

x

Worn down more emotionally than physically, it's some time before Janet can pass through straining lips "When those photos came out on the Internet, I quit NCIS."

Lisa remembers it differently, remembers those awful days when scandalous nude fakes had filled the web and ruined their lives. Remembers how Jan had tried to commit suicide right in their bullpen. If she and Ziva hadn't walked in–.

Some women still haven't put their lives back together. Janet's family had disowned her, _that_ had been the worst thing for her but "As I recall, telling your parents you were resigning was a scam of Kevin's to shock your father into listening to you and finally into forgiving you. But if you feel this time that you really want to quit, I'll help fill out your papers until your hand heals."

She sighs hard. "Bitch. Do you _always_ have to have my back?"

"I admit it's not easy, but yes, I do."

"'What are partners for'?" she whispers.

"No, idiot. Because I love you." Now Jan does meet her eyes. "Besides, you are not leaving me alone with Kevin without a Referee."

"Seems to me you spend more time refereeing when we go at it."

"True. Then you're not depriving me of the funnest part of this job."

Janet picks her head up enough to see her. "Funnest?"

"What can I say? You make me crazy."

"Not half what you make me."

"But ganging up on Kevin is so much fun."

She puts her head down. "Got me there," she whispers.

x

"They're waiting outside." The answer is an aggravated sigh. "Should I send him away?"

For a long time it seems she won't get an answer. "Jan, should I sen-?"

"_Yes_!"

She goes to the door, touches the handle.

"No. Wait."

She turns back, careful to keep a neutral expression. She needn't have bothered; Janet is staring up at the ceiling.

"He really looks like him?"

"They tell me 'identical'. Abby says 'super identical'."

"They say he's a victim too?"

"That they all agree on."

"I'll bet."

"I'll send him away."

... "No."

x

Janet stares at the ceiling, memorizing every tiny crack, every shadow, every light spot. The door opens, she hears bodies move in, hears whispers so soft she can't distinguish the words. There's Kevin's whisper, Lisa's, someone's she can't identify.

"Jan?" Lisa says aloud.

She won't look.

"Janet?" Kevin says several seconds later.

She won't look. If she doesn't look, this won't be real.

"Agent Levy?" A new voice. A voice out of hell.

WHY? Why did he _do_ it? Why? She has an answer but it's no answer. He hurt her so badly. He should be dragged in here in fetters, kneeling in chains, broken and bleeding and as bruised as she is. But it's not him. It's his brother, come to make amends. Well, he can't _make_ amends, not for this!

"Agent Levy?"

Go away! Go away! _Go_ _Away_! _GO_ _AWAY_!

"Agent Levy?"

She squeezes her eyes shut, feels tears slip out to pool at the corners of her eyes, get absorbed by the gauze.

She opens her eyes, fights the stinging pain. Wiping her eyes with her good hand doesn't help, nothing helps. It's just more pain on pain.

x

She slowly lifts her head, feeling the pain in her neck fight with her. The pain filled her whole body for days. She hasn't seen her face. She's _afraid_ to see her face.

But the face she sees before her beyond the foot of the bed is the one she's seen in every one of her nightmares for three days, the one she'll see in every nightmare she'll have for the rest of her life.

When she first saw it, it was that of a possible future friend, maybe more. She'd been horny, on the prowl, and had thought she'd gotten so very lucky. Who knows how much luckier she could have been, she'd thought, had she 'played her cards right'? She'd let her guard down, all the way down, and had gone from wise and resourceful hunter to his stupid prey.

But this isn't that same face.

But it's the same forever nightmare face. The face she hates. The face of Evil.

"I'm sorry for what my brother did…."

.

Next Episode: Sting.

Michelle and Jimmy Palmer and Donald 'Ducky' Mallard return from their respective vacations as NCIS must deal with an unexpected threat.

.

Author's Note: Prior to Sting, I'm publishing my first _Crossover_ story, so look for it in that Section or select me as a 'Favorite Author' below to get notifications of postings in your email. It's a combined 'NCIS and Star Trek, the Next Generation' mystery entitled '**Judgment on Risa**'. Come with the officers and crew of the Enterprise-E as they join with agents from the SCIS to investigate the most inoffensive planet in the Federation.


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